Six Shades of Gray
by FountainPenguin
Summary: All-Stars has ended. Chris has disappeared in search of a new, non-flooded island for next season. All the alternate personalities who used to live in Mike's head are gone. After three days locked in his room at the dingy hotel on the shore - Casa Dos Losers - he finally emerges feeling like a changed man. It's about time he and Zoey had a little talk. (Written July - October 2015)


I'd picked the green plastic plate for the gingerbread men on purpose, even though in doing so I probably gave my whole secret plot away. Ah, well - gingerbread alone, in June, was likely to shoot up six red flags in his brain as it was. As I finished humming Mal's song and moved onto _Ding, Dong, the Witch is Dead_ , I slid my cookies on the buffet table with the rest of the food and gave Gwen a little smile. "Thanks so much for helping me with the baking. After four hours of mixing things, my wrist kil-"

She threw out one hand as she filled the punch bowl with the other. "Seriously, cut it out, Zoey. I'm not going to ask you anymore. If you thank me ever again in this lifetime, I'm going to be smothered. I was only too glad for a new excuse to get away from Heather and Alejandro." She stuck out her tongue and pointed into her mouth. "It's like I don't know her anymore. Not that I ever really did to begin with, or wanted to, but … Yieh, it really creeps me out to see her being all happy and flirty like that. Who's next to fall - Noah?"

"I was a huge Aleheather fan myself from the start," I admitted, brushing crumbs to the floor, "but it does seem a little … layered on, even for him."

One set of double doors flew open on the far side of the ballroom and thumped together again. Jo marched towards us, toting a moaning Cameron under one arm. "Ha! Shout it louder if you can, Heiress. With that million dollar win you just tattooed across your forehead, I wouldn't be shocked if they're out on the shore prepping for your funeral. Since your little muffintops hasn't come back to do it for you, you'd better keep your eyes on your butt." She chuckled as I tried to keep my cheeks from brightening almost the same color as my hair. "Of course, those two are going to have to pull some pretty clever tricks if they wanna try sinking their claws into me. Here, I found that gerbil child you wanted."

My eyes stretched as Jo twisted to give me a better look at her cargo. Not only did he still have his casted left arm, but the sling had disappeared, his glasses had popped out a lens, and his chin was sliced around the jawline in oozing crimson wounds. Chatter had turned to puzzled muttering as she'd marched past the dining table; even Sam was looking up from his Game Guy. Abandoning the peppermint napkins in my hands, I pulled Cameron from Jo's grasp and stood him on the floor. "Cam, what happened to you? I thought you, Lindsay, and Owen were chasing butterflies along the beach."

"I know! I thought we were too." He leaned over, his one good hand so tight around his knee that I think I heard it crack. "But then Ezekiel launched himself out of nowhere - scared her off - and Josh snuck up on me from behind and took me flying. Through the evergreens."

That made Jo slap him on the back, which of course sent Cameron lurching face-first into the punch. "Better watch your tiny diapered heiney a little better next time, Professor Brainiac. I won't always be around to shoot big mean Bat Wings outta the sky."

"You shot him," I repeated, half-wishing this wasn't what my life had become.

"Just with a pinecone." She peeled Cameron away from the punch bowl and pointed at his bleeding cheek. "Big boys can't take it, then they shouldn't dish it out, I say. Mutant or not."

"Yeah … where is Josh?" Gwen glanced over her shoulder towards the gaping windows that overlooked Lake Wawanakwa. Still hard to believe even now that Mal had blown up the island - our island - that I'd known since Season 1. Fang had come back this morning to make his usual rounds by the dock, and this time he'd brought some punk friends with broken teeth and torn dorsal fins. Unsurprisingly, Scott still hadn't come in from the hallway. I could hear him now, arguing with Ezekiel beyond the tall doors.

"Ehiyeh. Probably flirting with that other intern he likes." Jo wandered over to the dining table and threw herself into the seat between the catnapping, protein-drained Lightning and angrily-doodling Courtney. "So c'mon, let's eat lunch already. We can't wait around for Captain Spike-Pit forever. He didn't show up yesterday or the day before that, so I don't see why he'd come crawling out of his watering hole now."

I bit my lip. "Oh, but just a minute. Someone should call for Owen, Linds, and Sierra, and we still have to get Zeke and Scott in here too."

Courtney's pencil snapped as she threw me that glare. "If they can't be bothered to fetch their own meal, they don't deserve it."

"Don't look at me," muttered Sam, still mashing away at buttons. "I'm not walking up to Serrs without a buttload of power-upped armor and at least three swords or something. Dang it, Link - Shoot straight! Straight!"

Cameron squinted. "Captain Spike-Pit?"

Jo waved one hand back and forth over her head, mimicking Mike's scruffy hair. "Little Red's slobber buddy in the kisslympics? When it's mating season, they can usually be found curled up together in their natural habitat under the kitchen sink and giggling like they didn't beware the forest mushrooms until it was too late."

"Hey! That only happened like, one time. Seriously!"

"Wait, did you just-?"

"Did I what, game junky? Tread carefully if that's the bridge you want to walk down." Jo flipped her eyes back to me and picked up her plastic plate. "The way I see it, you oughta be thanking me for yanking your lips apart. Your beanpole of a boyfriend had clearly turned into that psychotic emo freak and was trying to suffocate you."

Gwen rolled her eyes and finally left my side to sample some of my pudding. "I'm counting down the hours until you run out of clever nicknames. Eva will pick one and stick to it until the death. At least with her we always know who she's talking about. With you it's always process of elimination. Have you even learned his real one yet?"

"Meh. It's Mick, right? Never cared, never will." She bounded back to the buffet and started dumping Gwen's perfect casserole onto her plate, not even caring that I'd raised my hands to protest. "Come on, Parkour Girl, you have to choke something down your gullet. Worry about your man all you want, but don't inconvenience everyone else. I'm starving."

Courtney came over to join us, bringing two plates that I politely pretended not to notice. "Jo's right. When he decides he wants to come out of his cave, he'll come out of his cave. Take it from someone whose carpool buddy has dug a literal one in the side of a mountain." She scooped herself two helpings of scrambled eggs, put both plates down, then leaned back so she could see past me to the ballroom doors. "Zeke! Leave Scott alone already and pick on someone who's not in a wheelchair. Come on, you're better than that."

"Oh, and _sure_ , he backs off because it's you." With tremendous effort on Scott's part, one of the doors heaved open. He rolled his chair in, and Ezekiel scampered to and fro behind him like he existed in a parallel dimension as a dog whose duty was to herd sheep down a gully filled with… Okay, I tried a little too hard trying to come up with a good simile there. Anyway, obligatory feral farmboy joke.

Then the scents of the buffet hit his nose. Abandoning Scott, he rushed forward. Cameron yelped and smacked himself with his cast as he tried to cover his eyes. I prepared to dive away, but Courtney snagged Ezekiel by the hood of his green sweatshirt as he charged past and hauled him up to his two feet. She started to chew him out with one of the usual scoldings she used to show her love; I didn't think he was paying attention, and I didn't think she cared. The instant she let him go, he threw himself on the buffet and started gobbling whatever he could stick his claws into.

I sighed, rubbing my elbow. "Wow, I guess Jo has a point. Sorry for making you all starve like that."

Gwen smiled as she bit into a warm biscuit (Ezekiel thought they were the biscuits he tried to make, but I threw his out and whipped up a new batch when he wasn't looking because his grubby hands are so gross. Please don't tell). "Don't be sorry," Gwen said. "If my boyfriend had locked himself up for three days, I'd be worried too. At least we know Chris hasn't gotten him. You missed it, but he raced off a few hours ago in the helicopter yelling something about a new island and new contestants off the coast of British Columbia. And no, there's still no sign of the bus he claimed was coming to pick us up."

I regarded Ezekiel with distaste as Courtney tried to drag him from the table. For two years and counting, I'd tried really hard not to be embarrassed by the fact that we share a handful of cousins, but sometimes he makes that very, very difficult. "Yeah… Well, it looks like my gingerbread and homemade extra-cheesey pizza will be going to waste another day."

Cameron reached up to pat my shoulder with his injured hand. "Oh, I wouldn't say they're a waste at all. I'm really excited for all this. It'll be my first time trying shepherd's pie with real, actual butter in it."

I rubbed his fuzzy scalp hard enough to shake his glasses crookedly against his face. "You really know how to flatter a girl, huh, Cam?"

He flapped his hand once like _Oh, you_ and tried to pull a grape from the stem without popping a knuckle.

Finally, Courtney wrestled Ezekiel across the room and into a proper chair. She came back to pick up the food plates, and when she returned she tossed one to Scott and acted like she hadn't noticed. Facing Ezekiel again, she slid some mashed potatoes onto a spoon with her thumb. "How can you even stand dating someone who just leaves you hanging like that? You're finally together again and he just ditches you the instant we get here?"

"Fighting off Mal left him exhausted," I tried. "He just needs… a lot of rest, I guess."

"Still." She pulled on Ezekiel's ear. "We'll be out of here soon. You live four hours apart, right? Don't you dare spit that on my last clean shirt, Zeke. Chew. Chew. Swallow. What happened to your sippy cup? Hiding by himself isn't the best way to impress a girl. It's rude and selfish, and you need to talk to him about it before it becomes a reoccurring thing."

Her words stirred Lightning awake. He stretched his arms across the table and through his blinks and yawns said, "Man, you've gotta take some relationship advice from the Lightnin', fire girl. I know girls, and anyone that high-maintenance ain't worth keepin' around outside a' school. Svetlana always makes you drive, every time. You're a girl yourself and it's wrong ta make you pull that much weight in this. Y'oughta meet each other halfway. Unless you're Lightnin', and then you can go all the way sha-easily. You could go all the way with five girls at the same time sha-easily."

Jo smacked him on the back of the head. "Reel it in, Mister Modesty."

"Did Mike tell you I always drive?" I asked, pulling in my brows.

He jogged over, sliding in for the stop as his hip bumped the buffet. "Yeah. Or at least she said somethin' sha-close to that up in the helicopter. That's the only part I remember about it."

I covered my face with one wrist. "Lightning, we've been over this half a dozen times. Yes, Svetlana identifies as female, and yes, everyone is more than aware you have an enormous rivalry crush on her, but Mike is a boy. I _know_ you know that."

"Or do I?" So saying, Lightning stuffed a breadstick in his mouth and moonwalked back into the kitchen. He tripped over something and fell against the stove, then screamed at it for singeing his arm 'on purpose'. I was so distracted with trying to keep my face straight that I didn't even notice Josh had flown in until he swooped over my head, swiped the whole bunch of bananas from the table, and perched atop one of the ceiling beams like a gargoyle.

"Gah!" Gwen slapped a palm to her chest. A glob of red jello dripped from her plate to the floor. "Don't _scare_ me like that. I'm sorry, but I am not comfortable with large leathery things brushing down the back of my neck without warning."

Josh swung himself upside-down, a banana in his mouth. He grinned. "Shorry, G'en. You'd do i'too like thish, eh? I brough' back Linds. Lost Owen some'ere. D'we get enou'food and forks'n stuff for the lunch party withou' me?"

I assured him we'd managed ourselves plenty fine today, trying not to look him in the eyes. Half his tan face was swollen up like a bowling ball. His opposite arm was about the same, thick and muscular as a gorilla's. He had a forked tongue to match with his jagged lower fangs. The rasping of his voice made me curl in my toes. If "hideous freak" were a term I could use without hurting anybody's feelings, that's what I would call him. He's a freak of nature that was screwed over _so_ hard by that toxic waste exposure.

And he is literally the happiest person I have ever met.

Josh backflipped from the rafter, flaring out his bat wings. He landed on one foot with all the grace of a flower petal. "Sure, sure, whatever you gals say, eh? But if you get a sudden craving for fresh cabbage or cookie dough or anything you like, don't even hesitate to ring my bell. It's not an inconvenience- it's my job. And even if it weren't, I'd be more than glad to zip down to the grocery store. No prob, eh? I can fly."

"Heh heh, that's kind of you, but there's really no-"

Ezekiel erupted in a sudden squeal. Courtney must have gotten out of his face for the first time. Springing onto the dining table, he raced to the end (knocking Jo's plate of fruit and perfect casserole to the floor) and leaped. He smacked hard on wood with flat feet and knuckled hands. Charged between Lindsay, who had just wandered in from the hall, and Lightning, who had just staggered out of the kitchen nursing his burned elbow. They hardly blinked. Courtney shouted. Scott laughed. Cameron ducked behind me. I'll admit, even I pulled back my feet to be sure they didn't fall in the path of his acidic blue drool.

But Josh fell to his knees and threw out his arms. "There's my pwecious radiation buddy!" As Ezekiel slammed into him, the two went rolling across the floor and broke into a joyful heap of tussling limbs and sharp, snapping teeth.

This… This is normal for my life these days.

"Ugh." Jo threw down her fork and stomped past me to pick up a second helping of casserole. "You can count yourself lucky your girlfriend would actually care if I wrung your throat around a curtain rod, little man."

Scott choked. Sam put down his game to slap his back, and when he could breathe again he wheezed, "Courtney, you replaced me with _him_?"

"Well, I just- See, the idea was- Okay, I don't-"

"I thought it was a joke!" He covered his face with his hands. "Maybe it is! Maybe this whole week is a cruel joke on me. I still can't believe that Gwen and I both went over that waterfall, and I'm the only one who ended up paralyzed. Again! It just isn't _fair_."

"Fairs have rodeos and prize pigs, Freckle-Face, and I'd've thought you of all corn-bellied hicks would know it."

"Yeah, so sorry I happened to miss all the sharp rocks at the bottom."

Courtney glared at Ezekiel as Josh flipped him over his shoulder. "He was basically a blank slate. I've been fixing him all by myself. That's the main reason why he's not trying to kill everyone right now, now that the moon hasn't been getting to his head. You're welcome. When I've finished with him, he'll be perfect."

"I ship it?" I offered, just to try lightening the tension.

"Don't _tell_ me your pretty face is going to be looking down at his blubbery, nursing mutant babies."

"Twenty bucks says you're not too paralyzed to feel a kick to the groin."

To everyone's surprise, I think, it was Lindsay who changed the subject. Clasping her hands, she smiled like a sunflower. "Hey, who brought the toaster this year? I found it in the cabinet yesterday and it works, like, _so_ good. So much better than trying to use the oven to grill cheese. It even turned my bread all the way from white to black!"

"Trent did," Gwen said shortly. "Last year."

"Are you sure? I was staring at it for awhile and I think it has the same logo on the bottom as the one you-"

"Trent did." End of discussion. Ezekiel and Josh broke apart, and Josh slunk out the double doors to lick his little claw wounds (or show them off to Melody half in the hopes that her inner veterinarian would spring to his aid and half in the hopes that she'd think he was cute, more likely). Jo headed back for the table with her new round of casserole. Sam turned up the sound on his game.

"Find any butterflies while you were out with Owen and Cameron, Lindsay?" I asked.

"Oh, yeah. Like three and a half tons. The ones who drink from the green glowy flowers always end up so pretty. There was this blue one that was _huge_. Kenton says they shouldn't be alive because they're insects, but they are! I got a perfect picture I'm going to e-mail to Tyler when we get Interne…"

She stopped. I examined my bare feet, praying for someone else to take on the role of comforter, just this once. But no one wanted to bring up Tyler. No one could _blame_ him after the way his house had collapsed, but it's still not the kind of subject you want to tread upon in front of a crowd. And we still didn't know if there were hidden cameras in the walls.

Just as Sam was starting to stand and Lightning was starting to bite his lip, Lindsay recovered on her own. She walked over to the buffet, took a knife, and sliced a peach in half. She tossed the pit away. "Oh, but Zach scared them all off. They don't like the way he smells. Cour- Carla should really give him a bath."

"He can so bathe himself. It's not my job to babysit him. Zeke, are you finished with these pancakes, or should I give them to Scott? And we humans walk on two feet- I taught you better than this. Is there even a brain left in that fat skull of yours, or did the gophers drag it out through your ear?"

Lindsay rolled her eyes at me and grabbed a handful of gingerbread cookies. I slapped her wrist out of impulse.

"Oh, oh, sorry! I'd rather you guys didn't eat too many of those yet. At least, if that's okay with you? I need to save them for when Mike comes down."

"All of them?" Jo asked, not looking impressed. "Again? You realize ol' Multicolored didn't even bother to show up last time. Or the day before that. At all. All day."

Scott crunched through the last of his hamburger. "Why, Red, what's the diz?"

"I just want to make absolutely sure he's Mike. I'm not taking any more chances."

Lindsay gave me a blank look. "Who else would he be?"

"Um… Mike has diss- Mike has multiple personality disorder, remember?"

She was tense immediately. "He has more than one personality? I only have one! Or sometimes three, depending on how angry or sad I get, but where did he get the others from? Did he kill everybody and steal their souls? Is that what happened to Tyler? Is that why he's gone and I never see him anymore? I don't want him to steal my soul!"

I tried to explain, but she fled back into the hall screaming "Bloody murder, bloody murder!" I tucked my hands behind my hips and shook my head.

"Anyway," I went on, turning back to the others, "they all like to think they're mature adults, but deep in their heart they're all secretly a bunch of little kids. They never had much when they were first created, nothing besides some bad memories, but they all have, like, their own color they identify with, and they sort of attached themselves to it like a security blanket. If given the choice, usually they'll go for what's most familiar out of instinct. Especially if you combine it with their favorite foods."

I picked up one orange bowl of plain yogurt and one of avocados. "Manitoba isn't a huge fan of eating in general, so he may not even bother and just want to sit and hear the sound of his own voice. But the trick is, he's the hardest one to spot when his hat is off. I wouldn't say he's _amazing_ at hiding his accent, but …"

For some reason, Gwen started snickering when I dropped my gaze to my feet.

"N-never mind," I said, replacing the bowls and patting at the air. "Vito likes his meat. He'll beeline for the grilled salmon, you mark my words."

I really hoped Chris hadn't been lying when he'd said the new fish he'd stocked the lake with weren't radioactive.

"And I'm still not sure if foods exist that Chester won't complain about, but whatever he picks, it'll be something that lets him use silverware. Plus he'll do his eye squinting. And if Svetlana walks in here, we'll know it in half a second, but I didn't want her to feel left out of the party." I held up a plate of the veggie-laden pizza I'd gotten so good at cooking over the last year, and Courtney yanked two pieces off right under my nose and tossed one to Ezekiel and the other to Scott.

Stifling some sort of expression that was probably going to be half grimace and half smirk, I put the violet plate down too. "Then there's Mike. Mike likes to make things difficult for me by being totally happy to eat pretty much anything, so long as it isn't spicy. He especially likes foods that are soft. His favorite stuff is cheese, and lots of it. Luckily for me, he's the only left-handed personality of the bunch, so once he starts eating we'll know pretty quick if it really is him in control."

Lightning dumped the entire bowl of grapes onto his plate. "Yeah, sounds flawless, unless she just eats some hot dogs or somethin' else sha-licious. Ain't always so fool-proof. Lightnin' favors his left hand too, but dependin' on the food he's got, he sometimes eats with his righty." So saying, he shoved a slice of orange into his mouth and bit down hard.

"Oh. I didn't think of that." For a moment I bit my lip, but then I shrugged. "Well, no biggy. There are other ways to figure out who's who. Like, you can always tell when Vito's awake because he thinks he's allergic to peanut butter, and Mike's the only one allergic to cat hair."

"Dakota's the same way," said Sam without looking up. "Even kittens make her break out in hives."

Courtney jabbed Ezekiel's nose with the flat end of her fork. "I don't suppose this loser smells anything like a cat."

He shrugged at me and spelled _Gopher king_ in sign language, and I shrugged back.

"No, probably not. So we'll just have to cross our fingers that my food plan will work after all." I waved my hand over the gingerbread men. "On that note, this is the plate we really don't want him to eat more than one cookie off."

This time, Cameron gave me a knowing smile and rolled his eyes. "That's right. We've got to save them all for Santa."

Scott chuckled, squeaking his chair back and forth. "Hate to burst your bubble, bubble boy, but Santa Claus ain't real."

… What?

"Um." I raised my hand. "Santa's totally real. I met him last July when I went to Showto… Er, never mind. We're pretty sure gingerbread is Mal's guilty pleasure. Cam said he went a _little_ ditzy and sort of let it slip one time." Then I laughed. "Happens to the best of them. He was so eager to stick that shiny crown on that he forgot how heavy it was going to be on his head."

They all looked at me, blank as a fresh sewing pattern. Even Cameron. I tilted up my hands.

"Er, approach-avoid scenario, I mean. You don't just get handed great power without any drawbacks. I was leading up to how Mal had an anxiety attack after the boxing challenge because he was the dominant personality and the dominant always has to take one for the teeeeam…? Cam kinda told me everything… Sorry, never mind. That's a story for another day. And if we would've realized it was him, we would've milked it." I leaned against one of the windows and put a hand to my cheek. Sometimes it's hard to remember that just because there are five people I often talk to who understand those kinds of jokes, they can be pretty obscure if you aren't living inside Mike's head. Or dating him.

My life had certainly flipped upside-down since this time last year. What was today? Our one-year anniversary as a couple was coming up soon, if we hadn't missed it already. I had no idea if we had or not, or even what the actual date was- such a good girlfriend I am, heh heh. If someone had told me a little over thirteen months ago that I'd soon tumble head-over-heels for a boy with a mental illness, I'm not sure I would've believed them. I was much too picky, much too proud, much too needy.

But who could've guessed that I'd find everything I ever wanted wrapped up in the same lovable package? The fantasy guy that I'd known I'd never be lucky enough to find was an awkward, goofy sweetheart like Mike, willing to help me get my dress and hair all prettied up for a fun night out and belt out all the wrong song lyrics in the car like Vito, never afraid to let me hear my flaws like Chester (Good gracious, like Chester), always up for a day romping through the woods and mountains like Manitoba, and athletic enough to give me a run for my money when it came to scaling trees or leaping ditches - and Svetlana had me beat there.

Heck- even _Mal_ had sat through my two-hour spiel on our potential future and my parents' disapproval about it and responded in all the right places like he was actually interested, which is more than Mike ever had without purposely triggering one of the others to take over for him. Ignoring the fact that I'd probably been emotionally murdering him by twisting a mental knife between the ribs, hey. I scored pretty dang good in the dating lottery. When another personality likes what you love and that your boyfriend can't stand, six-in-one ain't so bad after all.

'Course, it would've been nice if at least one of them appreciated my manga collection, or my taste in cheesy old movies from the 70s. Or knew how to help me with my algebra. I really hate to be the one to start the gossip chain going, but you may as well hear it straight from the girlfriend…

See, while every one of Mike's alters is clever in their own way, none of them is actually… all that smart. I think their schooling got split between them, so a lot of my dates with Mike had morphed into homework parties over orange soda and vanilla ice cream we ate straight out of the carton before the sun even went down. This last year I'd gotten to teach him tiny tidbits of information, like who our current prime minister was, why the Netherlands send Canada tulips every year - or _that_ they send us tulips every year - and how we used to be ruled by Great Britain and what the American Declaration of Independence was and that African isn't a language and where one could find Vietnam on a map (Hint: Not Greenland). Glass half full, though: at this rate, it looked like we'd never run out of things to talk about.

But what pair didn't have their differences? As much as it irked me when Mike wouldn't thank me for holding a door open for him when I'd thanked him each time he'd taken the past five, among a dozen other little things, I would never dare let any hint of irritation slip in case he subconsciously tried to invent someone else to fill in the gap. I could still remember my first encounter with Snowball…

… I hadn't known much about dissociative identity disorder then. Looking back on it, I'd known nothing at all, only that Mike wasn't always aware of what he was doing, and HE LIKED ME! Not Anne Maria- ME! Suck it! Suck it SO hard! Who says nice girls finish last?

I'd thought he'd been born with his condition. Nope. Worse. Less than thirty minutes after Mike's elimination, I'd confronted Cameron about his being Mike's surrogate therapist - correct on the first guess. He'd stammered an apology for shoving me off that raft days before, and I let that grudge go. I asked him to share the notes he'd taken about Mike's disorder. He'd refused ("Client confidentiality," was the first thing he said, and then he said, "Oh yeah, and he's my friend and I don't want to betray his trust for the fourth time in twenty-four hours").

So I'd stolen his notebook and stayed up all night reading by the glowing red dot on the camera in the confessional, and I can still remember the way I got lightheaded when I read Cameron's quick, scratchy handwriting: _DID. Caused by extreme childhood trauma. Mind shatters to protect psyche._ He'd boxed it all three times.

As I'd stared at the pages, I learned everything Cameron knew about Mike's abusive past. I learned that no alter had specific control while they slept and they would take over at random and argue amongst themselves. I learned about his medication and his anxiety attacks (Manitoba's attack, specifically). I learned how his mother's treatment towards him was only the lesser of two evils, but that he would never bring himself to leave her because one of the alters (Cam hadn't figured who, but I had a good guess now) would go on rampage if that were the case. I learned how all the puzzle pieces fit together, and realized I had given myself up to a boy I really knew nothing about, and I was so scared.

Of course I was. I didn't know the first thing about mental disorders. How was I supposed to help _anyone_ through this kind of thing? Was I ready for this kind of commitment with someone who wasn't normal? What if he turned out to be dangerous? What if he was as abusive as this 'Kurt' fellow he'd bubbled out to Cameron? What if we started dating and one of his personalities hurt me, and then he came back and apologized and promised it would never happen again, and I believed him and stayed trapped in a toxic relationship for the rest of my life? Then, Mike had taken bits of the abuse too - What if _he_ turned around and hurt me?

These thoughts and worse, more shameful ones I gasped out in the confessional, and through my tears begged the producers never to air my breakdown. After all, they'd removed the secret sins that Heather, Duncan, Owen, and Gwen had confessed to one another back in Season 1 out of respect to them. And to my eternal gratitude, they'd granted my request too. Mike had never known about my doubts. Never would, either. I was very good at keeping secrets, and it's the ones like these that should never have to be revealed.

Cameron tugged on my sleeve. "Zoey," he said way too loudly, "please don't cry. What's wrong?"

Jo and Lightning snorted simultaneously. "One-Man-Circus," she said, right as Lightning said, "Svetlana."

"Wow, huge surprise, guys." I scrubbed my eyes clean with one of my bracelets and drank in the absent faces and chatty voices around me. "Am I seriously the only one who's worried about him? I know Mike's my boyfriend, and some of you might think that means he should be my responsibility alone, but don't any of you care? He said he'd come out when he finished sleeping. It's not natural for any human being to sleep for _sixty-six hours straight_."

"Zoey, chill." Sam didn't even look up from his Zelda. "He's still rebooting. It's not his fault. If he could wake up sooner rather than later, he'd do it."

My heart began to pound like a patrol of elephants. "Sorry? He's what, now?"

"Basically hibernating," Cameron supplied, halving the stack of blue plastic cups and taking one for himself. "He does that when he's been placed under a lot of mental stress. Same reason why you'd sleep so much if you had the flu."

With some maneuvering around his broken arm, he pressed the button on the cooler to squirt pink lemonade into his cup, and he kept talking in his typical calm way like a hibernating human was the most normal thing he'd thought about all morning. To be fair, he had been abducted by a guy with wings, and Courtney was over there feeding Ezekiel from a spoon that rapidly dissolved beneath his acidic saliva. "Awake, your brain and body functions require more oxygen than they do with you asleep, and Mike requires a lot of it right now to do the repair work on all the neural cords he snapped after he flipped into quote-unquote 'subspace' - not that I'm saying that's what it was, but that's what he seems to be convinced happened to him - and took down Mal. Therefore, his body puts him to sleep so as not to waste aforementioned required oxygen."

Sam nodded. "Like how a dim screen uses less battery than a bright one. And a closed console uses next to none at all."

"Wait. What? You both know- That doesn't- When did you- Why should- How would he…?" My words failed me. I held out both arms. Cameron was sipping his lemonade, so the rim of the cup concealed his glasses and he didn't notice.

Link met a horrific demise at the hands of some beast, and Sam finally raised his eyes. "Mike downloaded a new upgrade to his mental program, and now he's rebooting his whole system so it can take effect. He did the same thing when he got hurled to the Playa last season. What is it he said? He has to pull all the pieces of himself back together before he catches on fire? He's resizing and polishing the crown? Ah, that wasn't it exactly, but it was something like that. He told Staci better. Oh my flubtub freaking cheese supreme." He set the DS down and rubbed his cheeks with both hands. "When Staci found out about his multiple personalities, you would have thought she'd just discovered endless soft serve ice cream machines. She. Would. Not. Shut. Up."

I twisted around on Cameron. "Cam, did you predict that Mike might shut down like this?"

He scrunched his brows together. "Why did you think I _brought_ my electroencephalogram?" He saw my puzzled look and tried again. "My brainwave-reader. I have the electrodes hooked up to his head right now." Setting aside his cup, he took Sierra's half-broken smartphone from the pocket of his hoody and began to tap some buttons. "When I checked about an hour ago, he'd hit REM and his waves were climbing back to Stage 1 at incredible speed."

I flinched. "That doesn't sound good. Isn't there anything we can do for him?"

Cameron sighed. "It just means he'll wake up pretty soon. Here's the live data, see?" He handed me the phone without looking at it, but all I could make out were squiggly black lines that ended in an abrupt way I hoped wasn't a bad thing, so I gave it back. "He's in his remission period now, and I suspect his dyspnea may be picking up again. I left him Lindsay's nail polish remover and he knows what to do with it, so he should be coming down once he's washed his hair to his own satisfaction."

My life and my friends, everyone.

Sudden clapping broke out as I reached down to pick a splinter from my little toe. "He lives!" Sam pumped his fist. "1-Up champ! 1-Up champ!"

Ezekiel snickered into the cup Courtney had placed between his lips. "A-a-a-aft tr-tree daaaays, he r-r-rise ag-g-geeen, eh?"

He stumbled to the dining table hand over hand along the wall. He was still dressed in his bright golden pajamas, his hair was so wet and ruffled that it was falling down into his eyes, and he was sporting two purple bruises that, though fading now, still took up the left side of his face. Shadows under his eyes made it look as though he hadn't slept for a week, even though that's exactly where he'd been. His fingers jittered like he'd downed a blenderful of espressos in one go. But he grinned a triumphant grin as he made his painful way around the edge towards us. Like he'd just stood in the face of a thousand alien saucers and saved the world. And my big tall Latin baby looked so beautiful and strong right then.

"Mike!" Abandoning my hurt toe, I sprinted across the ballroom and hurled myself straight into his side. He yelped and we fell back on the floor, laughing at our tangled limbs. I was sitting on his stomach, and as I tightened my arms and legs around him I gasped out, "I'm so glad you're back."

He embraced me tight. "Me too. You have no idea. It's been absolutely forever. How long was I out just now?"

"Almost three days straight."

"Yikes." He grinned and wound a strand of scarlet hair around my ear. "New record. I guess that makes sense, heh. It was a pretty big one."

I didn't unwrap myself, so he stood up cradling me against his chest and carried me to the buffet. "Aw man, Zoey, is this teensy meal any way to greet a guy after he's been out cold for half a week? I'm seriously starved. I wasn't sure I was going to make it down the stairs without slamming straight on my face."

"But you survived." Was it really my Mike? It sounded like Mike's voice, albeit a little high and groggy with sleep. It looked like Mike's bright eyes, although they were still accented with a shade of bags.

Mike kissed my forehead and set me on the floor so he could gather up his food. He went for the turkey first, cut a few slices, and handed me the plate without looking my way. Okay… that was just a titch odd. I'd only ever told Vito that turkey was my favorite.

As I watched, he chose plenty of salad, almost all of the remaining fruit, three ham and cheese sandwiches, two additional grilled cheeses, a stack of four pancakes, some carrots, strawberry yogurt, some of the salmon- a little bit of everything. Or I guess a lot of everything.

He also took one of the gingerbread men, which wasn't anything unusual. He always took one when Sydney baked them - no more, no less. Only now I realized he'd done it to pacify the sulky Mal in his brain. A sort of, _You don't deserve this but you're still family so here's a peace offering that I don't really mean and you won't really accept,_ type of thing.

Mike sat between Lightning's empty chair and Cameron, who had already curled up to focus on the smartphone and eat apple slices at the same time. When I had gathered a new plate of food for myself, I took the place across from him so I could study his face. I didn't want to miss anything. No more taking chances. Mike rubbed his hands together and went at his fish with the salt shaker. Then,

"Aw, man." He leaned back in his chair. "Yo, Light. Be a pal and toss me a fork, would you?"

Instantly Lightning grabbed _all_ the forks from the buffet. He flexed a bicep, drew back his arm, and hurled them all the way across the ballroom. Everyone covered their faces as the plasticware rained around them, and some of us laughed and some of us groaned. "Yeah baby!" Lightning threw his arms into touchdown position. "Lightning strikes! Woot! Twenty points for every one of you sha-nuggets I hit! Come on, dudes, own up. Who'd I hit?"

Hands went up among a chorus of "Me"s. I was so amused by watching Lightning putting on a one-man cheerleading routine that I almost didn't notice when Mike stabbed a bite of pancake and lifted the fork to his lips.

With his right hand.

Gwen noticed this at the same time and shot me a raised-eyebrow look. I clapped my wrist to my mouth. It was Mal. It had to be Mal. I hadn't actually _noticed_ what hand Mal preferred to eat with, but that definitely wasn't Mike holding his fork so naturally in his nondominant fingers, whatever Lightning said.

Well, I could try a quick experiment. Mal was observant. Mike, though I loved him to Uranus, was as oblivious as a muskrat when it came to social cues sometimes. So, who was going to give themselves away if I continued to stare a few seconds more?

Mike stopped eating and looked up again, quirking his brows. "Um, is something wrong, Zo?"

It was Mal it was Mal it was Mal oh my gosh please no.

I swallowed. "I… was worried you wouldn't like my gingerbread men. I accidentally poured in a third too much extra sugar."

"Are you kidding?" He stuffed half the cookie into his mouth. "These things are amazing! Did you really bake these yourself, just for me?" His eyes widened, and he sat back a little in his chair. "Was all of this just for me?"

Jo leaned across Lightning's chair to swat him in the ear. "Don't get too big a head _or_ go to town quite yet, Kaleidoscope. This victory meal's for everyone."

That made him laugh. Abandoning his pancakes, he took another plate from the table and headed back to pile on more. "Trust me, if anyone here deserves a victory meal, I do. Oh." He continued walking backwards as he turned to shoot me a sheepish smile and one of Manitoba's trademark winks. "And you too, Red. Congrats on taking home the million, even if I did have to lose out. But I'm myself again, and that's good enough a prize for me."

I glanced at Sam. Red? Mike had called me Red before, especially when our texts turned more flirty, but not often.

Sam shrugged and touched his ear. "Um. So… Staci gave me a call before I got on the plane here. She wanted you to know that she's really sorry about that time she laug-"

"Nah, it's okay. I'm over it." Mike picked up a steak knife, raised it above his head with both hands, and brought it down into the turkey so hard, bones cracked and gravy went flying. Lightning had the first brilliant idea of his life and yanked the knife away from him. The others who were still at the dining table with me started sliding their chairs away from his place. I sank into my seat. Mal was back, he showed that much frustration, and no appearance from Chester? That couldn't possibly be a good sign.

"But I'm sure she's really, really, _really_ sorry-"

"She couldn't feel empathy if I slapped her in the face at the same time I slapped myself. Do you think she honestly felt bad for the actual laughing at me, or because I confronted her about it? Besides, I told her in my last e-mail, she's long been forgiven." Mike glared at Sam, then came back with his helping of turkey and returned to his pancakes. Cameron caught my eye and slipped beneath the table, plainly urging me to join him. Although I doubted even Mike was _that_ oblivious, I ducked under too.

Cameron readjusted his glasses with his cast. "What is wrong with him? His cortisol levels must have shot through the roof just then. With frustration like that, subconscious or otherwise, Chester should've had something to say."

"I don't know," I whispered back, trying to pretend I didn't notice when Ezekiel poked his upside-down face beneath the tablecloth. "When Mike told me on the way over how he 'forced a reboot' on his brain, I thought Mal was gone for good. But now I'm not sure what to think."

"No, Mal is gone. I'm certain of that." He didn't look certain of that.

 _Gone,_ Ezekiel confirmed, spelling the word in sign language with his clumsy fingers. _Smells differ._

Gwen, who was just to my left, stuck her head under the table without dropping from her seat. "Yeah, unless he was lying about the 'reset button' thing because he didn't want you to worry about him. I don't mean to come off sounding like a downer, but he seems to do that a lot."

I put my knuckles to my mouth. "She's right. Mike hates it when my anxiety acts up. Did he lie to spare my feelings? Ah, shoot. I almost wish that I were a personality just so I could know what really happened inside his head. But that would make dating him really awkward."

"Hey guys," whispered Sam, crawling under with us on his forearms. His chair scooted loudly against the wooden floor. I put my hands on my knees and looked dully up at the table. So much for our secret meeting.

"We're worried one of Mike's alters is attempting to masquerade as him," Cameron said. A little too loudly, if you ask me. I think I saw Mike's knee twitch.

He glanced at me. "Mal?"

"I don't think so…" I wrapped my arms around my shoulders. "But I don't really know Mal well enough to tell for sure. Only what I saw from him on the island when he wasn't avoiding me, the bits Mike gave me right after the flood, and what Cameron told me from that evening after the boxing challenge. I think he's in Vito mode. It would explain why his hair is down, even if it is flipped the wrong way. And he gave me turkey, and he… can't possibly be Vito, or that shirt would be off in a second, he'd never have picked up the salad, and he would've gone in for a kiss when he had me in his arms."

Cameron said, "It could even be one of the splinters. I've never seen one so calm before, but I suppose anything is possible. Who knows? Maybe he picked up a few more of those guys during his reboot, and this one just wanted to pop out and explore."

"Oh, not the cutter, I hope." A dash of panic swelled up in my chest. What if there was a reason Mike hadn't changed out of his pajamas yet? Something that went beyond mere exhaustion? What if he was hiding open wounds beneath those long sleeves?

"I can almost guarantee it's not that one. He was nuts."

"But what _if_?"

Sam shook his head. "I'm just gonna ask him straight out."

I didn't like that forward plan, but I didn't have a better one. As we wriggled back into our seats (which some of us had an easier time doing than others), he cleared his throat. "So uh, who won this time?"

Mike had stopped eating and put his arms self-consciously around his chest. When he realized that someone was finally addressing him again, he cast a blank glance at Sam. "Huh?"

"In the reboot. Did the others gang up on you in another bonus-level crown-stealing last-minute revolution like they did back at the Playa last year? Did Manitoba almost die again?"

"Oh." He returned to his food, but he was picking at it. "No, it went really well, actually. Thanks."

I took up my fork with my left hand, trying to be obvious about it while looking like I wasn't. "So Mike. I was totally freaking out when you wouldn't wake up. This whole time I thought maybe you'd gone into a coma or… or were hiding from me, or something, but the guys told me you were… rebooting?"

"Yeah. Oh yeah. Oh." Mike raised one finger and placed his fist in front of his mouth until he swallowed. "When something really huge happens with my alters, say, when we switch who the dominant personality is, my brain kind of overloads and shuts down all my body's non-vital functions, like digestion and my ability to feel happiness, and puts us all to sleep until it can stabilize. We kind of… get all drained, have our beings all flushed out, and then, um… Get our cake batter poured back into our molds and re-baked, if that makes any sense? So that we're all fresh and good as new again."

His voice started fade as he went on. "Like stress eating, only it's stress sleeping, and then when you've recovered you can wake up. It's my body's way of dealing with hard times when we're having trouble coping with our memories … Meaning each other… I-it pretty much only happens a few times a year, and taking down Mal finally did me in for this summer." His voice rose again. "I forced it on purpose when I confronted him. Um, did I forget to tell you this before? Wow… sorry. You know me." Mike grinned. "Always got a lot on my mind."

I laughed at the joke, digging my nails into my lap. Then I glanced out the windows and over the lake. "I don't remember that happening to you between seasons. Did it?"

"Yeah, just once, back in January."

"If I would've known this was a thing-"

" _No_. It was almost midnight when I felt it coming on and I didn't want to worry you. First of all I'd have to explain it. I just barely did that poorly enough without being minutes from blacking out. And then I knew you'd want to drive all the way over no matter how many hours it was, and you'd be super tired as you zombied your way along the freeway, and that had Bad Idea written all over it. And it wasn't like you could do anything for me but watch me wriggle around, and that went over so well last time."

He cast a glance Sam's way, and Sam mumbled a "We're sorry." Then Mike shrugged and took another bite. "Anyway, it wasn't a big deal. Just one of the splinters trying to evolve again. He actually got pretty far- he'd started to glow and everything. His color was silver and he was convinced he was a knight with a sword. I'm glad he didn't make it, actually. He was kind of a butt-kissing creep." He put his hand to his face and lowered his voice to tell us the secret. "I think he was hitting on every one of us."

"Foxtail," Jo said without looking up from her casserole. Mike winced, I raised my eyebrows, and Cameron picked up on this and leaned over so he could peer down the table at her.

She put down her fork as every eye swiveled her way. "What? Your little brainwart Foxtail called me not three weeks after we went home. He wanted to know what'd happened to all the kitchen knives and kept crying about how he was so sorry and everything, but 'the scary guy in the attic was making him do it'."

"What did you do?" I asked. I liked Foxtail, and for about two seconds I was offended that he would trust Jo before me, and then it clicked. Mike had a list of contact numbers on his phone, organized alphabetically. In no world would Zoey White ever be listed before Jolene Blanchard… Uh-oh. It was probably a bad idea for the girlfriend to be the last one any of the splinters reached in case of an emergency. I'd have to ask Mike to add an asterisk before my name or something.

"I hung up on him, duh. It wasn't my problem."

Scott broke into a smirk as Courtney brought him another hamburger for the plate in his lap. "Heh heh. Then what made you decide to give him your number in the first place?"

Jo faltered. "I, uh…"

Mike laughed in one little exhale. "You called 911. Thanks, by the way. I almost killed my little neighbor's dog. They took me away just in time."

"Yeah, well," she mumbled. She shoveled in some more casserole, then glanced up again. "Which reminds me. He was also freaking out because your biology homework wasn't done and it was three in the morning. Thus the attempt at dissection, if I had to guess. Anyway, he said he couldn't write your report because you're the only one in the circus who knows how to work a computer. Is that true?"

"Which 'me' are you referring to?" Mike asked, sounding genuinely curious.

"Pointy. Spike-Pit. Beanpole. Grass-Head. Multicolored. Flip-Face. Mr. Quickchange. Take your pick, I got plenty more."

"And my name is…?"

She rubbed her jaw and sighed at the table. "Mick."

He nodded, looking disheartened but not bothering to correct her. "Yeah, the Mike part of me is the only one that ever grasped electronics. When I was… Um, well, Chester can't be bothered to learn anything besides the TV remote and the radio knobs, Vito can snap a selfie and send a text if you open the right apps on my phone for him, but if he gets out then he mostly likes to spend his limited time cruising around for pretty girls in my mom's car."

I grimaced and swallowed my apple slice. I didn't think that had ever ended well once.

"Then Manitoba is convinced most anything with wires is witchcraft, Svetlana always worries that too much time in front of screens will rot our brain and damage our eyesight, Mal just gets a kick out of destroying anything he doesn't understand, and all but a few of the splinters are too befuddled to tell the difference between a phone and a banana. Why do you bring it up?"

Jo shrugged. "Just hadn't thought about how some skills could belong to only one slice of you and it was hilarious."

He grinned back. "It kind of is. But maybe that's just because it's nice to remember that Mike got a talent of his own too." He patted his own chest. "Great job, guy."

"What about Snowball?" Sam asked. "He rocks at video games."

Courtney shook her head. "That can't be. Snowball's the emotional wreck who's always asking for his dad. He's like four years old."

"Nuh-uh," said Lightning. "That's Bolt. I'd know - Lightnin' got to name him when he called. Snowball's the one who keeps changing his mind if he's a dude or a girl."

That made Scott laugh. "Sorry Fizz, but Courtney's right. You're thinking Polka-Dot. Snow's the anklebiter who sucks his thumb and pinkie at the same time."

"She's got at least three," Lightning said, shrugging his shoulders in a defensive way.

Sam tapped his fork against the table. "He talks about his dad, he likes strawberry Nesquik, and he brings up how much his foot hurts like eight times in every conversation. And he's an insane master at Mario Kart."

 _Smells bad milk_ , Ezekiel signed.

"… You sure that wasn't Teddy Grahams?"

Mike got up and left the ballroom in a quick blur of marching yellow. I stood and started after him, ducking into the hall through the double doors just before they clicked shut. "Mike?"

He didn't respond.

"Mike?" I tried again, only barely holding my panic at bay. He wasn't familiar at all with the Casa Dos Losers hotel and didn't seem to know where his wandering would lead, or particularly care for his destination, so long as it got him away. I followed him along the red hall. Past the rickety wooden stairs that would have led up to his room. Around the corner to the laundry. Locked after a supposed incident involving Owen, Jo, and maple syrup, and Melody would have had the only key on the cord around her neck. So he had to draw up short and stare at the door. I could sense his frustration building with every bare slapping step my toes made. Dead-end. Trapped.

"Mike?"

He wheeled around, pajamas flashing shiny gold. "I'm not going to just sit there and listen to that, Zoey. My other personalities are _dead_. All of them. I'm so- I'm so…" He took a deep breath, then blew it up at his hair, ruffling the scraggly spikes. A few of them were starting to prick up to normal again.

"Offended. I know." I started to put one arm around his waist, but he cringed, so I withdrew. "You so have a right to be. I'm sorry- I'm your girlfriend, and I should've stood up to them. I just didn't know what to say. I'm sorry. If it happens again, I'll be there for you."

"S'okay. It's just… They're all treating me like a joke. I never acted that immature when I was a kid. What is with people these days? I wasn't gone _that_ long."

I smiled thinly. "Nope. Courtney, Lightning, and Scott were just being their usual idiotic selves. It builds up and they have to let it out somewhere. They figured you were an easy target. And Sam didn't know what he was saying, really."

He sighed and scratched behind his head. "Zoey? Can you… Are you worried that I'm not really Mike?"

My thoughts flashed back to his handedness. The turkey. Red.

"Of course not." I closed my fingers over his. "You're my Golden Mike, clear as day."

His nose wrinkled up. "Oh. Good. Yeah, I'm sorry. I'm still feeling a little off from the reboot. It's the soreness. Makes me a little cranky, but it'll pass as I finish waking up. Sorry I'm so high-maintenance. And I didn't take my meds yet."

"It's fine, you're not, I love you exactly as you are, and you should do that."

Mike tightened his grip. "I really wanted to see you first."

He leaned in to kiss my forehead. A giggle escaped between my teeth. He pulled back, scruffy eyebrows together, more than a little hurt.

"Sorry. It's just that your hair really smells like nail polish remover."

"Long story. Ask Cam."

I pressed my palm to his left cheek, partially to lead into my next question and partially to see if he would flinch. He did. "How did your face get all bruised? It looks like a fist."

"My… Well, _Mal_ didn't want to stay down. But he's gone now. Totally gone. The unexpected reboot wiped out the last trace of him. Every green sparkle."

"You're sure?"

"Absolutely." No hesitation. No stuttering. No biting lips. No flicking away of pupils. No touching right shoulders. I didn't believe him.

I shook my head. "Well, I'm glad you're up and doing okay now, but promise me that next time you reboot or whatever, you'll give me a call before it starts so I know what's going on and can keep you in my thoughts. I promise I won't drive out to Auburn County if you don't want me to, but I'd feel better knowing that you were going to be away than I would if I kept calling your phone and you didn't pick up."

"I'm not sure there will be a next time," he mused, looking up at the corners of his eyes, "but if there is, I will definitely give you a heads up. I don't want you to worry."

"You're worth worrying for."

That prompted a sad smile. He held my wrists again. "I'm really not, Zo. Mal's gone - they're all gone - and I'm me again. So… so there's nothing left for you to worry about anymore."

"Mm."

Of course I still wasn't buying it. Could you really blame me? Last night, I'd been treated to my first nightmare about my future - I assumed there would be more over the coming weeks, because that sounded like the universe. It was my wedding day. You can probably predict where this is going already.

We were back on Wawanakwa, for some reason, which was my first tipoff that it was a nightmare. Mike was waiting underneath a periwinkle-strewn trellis at the very tip of the Dock of Shame. He looked nervous and sweaty in his neat suit, but his shoulders eased when he saw me approaching in my white dress, me clinging to my dad's chubby palm and waddling awkwardly in my sharp and higher-than-usual heels. My parents didn't approve of Mike - never had - so having my dad finally swallow his pride and walk me to my fiancé lifted an enormous weight from my neck.

I took my place before the priest. Mike kept twitching his hands and I had sticky, hot flies buzzing around my nose. But somehow we both survived the ceremony, and Mike swept down to kiss me, wrapping his arms around my back like he wanted to squish me straight into him and never let me go. Honestly I'd be okay with that, except that it was going to make my sewing a little difficult. There was still a string of saliva between our lips when we finally pulled apart.

"Hey, Zo," he said in Mike's voice as the hair tumbled down over his left eye. "Hope you didn't miss me too much."

I tightened my jaw as cameras snapped and our Total Drama castmates cheered well-wishes from the sidelines. "Cute joke, Mal, but I don't have time for you today. Let Mike out again. I didn't come here to marry a thirteen-year-old on a power trip the size of Nunavut."

Mal twitched a little, then dropped back into his typical low monotone. "Oh, silly Zoey. Did your precious Mike forget to explain to you that we're a package deal? He's the banana shipment, and we're the spiders that stowed away on the boat. I do hope you like your in-laws, because they aren't going anywhere."

"I said, you let. Him. Out!" I raised a fist that I wasn't sure I intended to use, and Mal took my hand and twisted it straight back so it made a cracking noise. I whimpered, but he didn't let go, so I couldn't check to see if anything was broken, or just sprained. My throat grew tight.

Noticing this, Mal shrugged and, after a few seconds more of pressure, dropped my wrist. "All right, Zo. It's your party, and you can cry if you want to."

"I need to get away from you." I tried to hurl myself into the lake, but when I turned around my dad grabbed my elbow and gave me a look of bright surprise.

"Away from who? Your new husband?"

"That's not my husband," I snarled, trying to twist free. "That's Mal!"

He frowned. "Zoey, sweetie, Mal is your husband now. You said 'I do', so long as you both shall live, and he's the one who kissed the bride."

Mal waved one hand politely. Randomly he was now holding a long scroll that looked like a contract, and my name was signed at the base in my own handwriting. Because obviously I would do something like that.

"But Mike-"

"Zoey." My dad held me by both forearms and made me look up into his eyes. "You told me this boy wasn't dangerous. You weren't lying to me, were you?"

"When I said that, I thought we were talking about Mi-"

"Excuse me," Mal cut in, easing my dad's hands away and sliding his arm around my shoulders (I didn't bother to suppress my shudder, and I think that amused him because his grip tightened). "I hate to cut the party short, but my wife and I have got to get going. Toodles."

I tried to protest, but you don't always get control when you're trapped in a nightmare. I guess that's sort of what it's like for Mike every day of his life. Yeah, I ran with him up the dock as all my friends threw rice over our heads and shouted their farewells. We passed between the loser cabin and the spa hotel, and Mal let me pause just long enough to turn and hurl my bouquet into the arms of a delighted Cameron. Then he pulled me into the woods. I don't know how long we stumbled about, me wishing curses on his black soul and he somehow avoiding all of them, but finally we rounded a cluster of boulders and entered a clearing.

I jolted him to a halt. We came face to face with a giant mansion sculpted entirely out of gingerbread. White plumes of frosting dripped from the edges of the roof and landed in curls on the porch. Shining peppermints gleamed in the windows. A sugar-water spring wound beneath a bridge of gumdrops. SweetTarts and Nerds formed a path that led up to a KitKat door. The whole thing was a little sickening even for me, and I wasn't the budding psychopath around these parts.

"Okay, no. I'm done. You've got to be kidding. We aren't going to live here, are we?"

Whistling, Mal combed his fingers through my hair, letting the red locks fall into my eyes. "Oh, but of course we are, princess. I always did have a thing for _ginger_."

He kept one hand in my hair as he took my wrist and led me up the path. I tried to drag my feet, but whenever I slowed, he'd yank on my roots and force me to keep walking. With a sigh, I lifted the ruined train of my dress from a fudge puddle.

"Mal, be honest with me for once in your life. Are you fixated on sweets because the others never let you have any?"

"I know it's a bit of a fixer-upper now," he said as we reached the porch, "but eventually you'll learn to love it, and me." He traced one fingernail down my cheek, and didn't seem at all bothered when I slapped his hand away.

"Was the sundae-making challenge the first time you ever tasted ice cream?"

"I'm glad we're married now, aren't you, my little tootsie roll? Now we belong only to each other forever, and no one can ever take us apart." He scooped me into his arms and carried me across the threshold, banging my head against the doorframe as we went in. How we even managed to fit in the same room as his ego is a mystery.

The inside of the gingerbread house was just as sugary sweet as the outside. Mal brought me through another door and into the living room, where he lay me down on a licorice couch. I jumped off, but suddenly the door was gone. Only walls of gingerbread and lemondrops, draped in curtains of Laffy Taffy. Two peanut butter rugs spread across the floor. Most of the far wall was occupied by a fire roaring in a fireplace made of chocolate that never melted, because this was a dream and apparently those things exist if you just believe hard enough.

I also noticed one other particular detail about this room - There was a fedora on the coffee table. I threw it on Mal's head, trying to force Manitoba out, but Mal only laughed and pushed the brim up with his knuckles.

"Aw, Zoey, don't tell me you're seeing someone else. And on the first night of our honeymoon, no less." Then he took the back of his shirt and pulled it over his head so he was standing bare-chested in the firelight. I think he had some bloody scars or something, but I was mostly wondering how he'd managed to keep the hat on his head while he did that. "See?" Mal held out his arms and stepped closer. "Vito isn't going to interrupt us either. It's only you and me, gingersnap, all to ourselves."

That was really too bad. I would've liked to see Vito then, since he had his peanut allergy and would've wanted to break out of here as much as I did.

I fully expected we were going to play fornication under command of the king just then. I weaseled off one of my high heels, ready to strike him in his eye with the point if need be. But instead of forcing himself on me, he just broke off a piece of the wall and chewed it contently, watching me with one raised eyebrow. Priorities. Yep, this was the Mal I'd known from camp, all right; the Mal who held my hand only when I took his first, who cringed away when we embraced and tried to act like he didn't, who kissed me like I kissed the scrapes on the daycare kids' knees.

"So… Should I brace myself to be murdered now?"

"Maybe when I finish eating. Or maybe not. I haven't decided yet. I think I'll let you sleep tonight. I'll let you get settled here and join you in a few minutes." He rubbed crumbs from his mouth with the back of his wrist. "Now, you be a good girl and lay down to get some rest. You'll want it. I might decide to kill you in the morning. Or maybe I won't. I suppose you'll just have to be ready for anything, Red. I think I would like to kill you, but I'll let you know if I change my mind, deal? Maybe I will. Or not."

Somehow I pulled a quiver and bow from behind my back and notched an arrow. I said, "Sorry, no deal," and let it fly into his neck. Mal crumpled to the floor instantly, and I proceeded to plug his entire body with arrows. When I was done, his hair shifted away from his eye and he was Mike again. That shouldn't have been a surprise, that I had killed Mike by killing Mal, but it was one in the dream. I collapsed to my knees, too numb to even cry as the gingerbread house swirled away beneath my bloody hands.

So I felt like I deserved to hesitate a little. That was my point.

"You think I'm still him," Mike realized, dropping my hands like they'd frozen to ice.

"What? No! Of course not. I just-"

"I get it. I'll always be him to you." He pinched the bridge of his nose and shut his eyes. "Please, Zoey, just listen to me. He's gone. _Everyone_ is gone. One by one, they all fell. Do you get what I'm trying to say?"

"Mike… I'm sorry."

"No, but do you get it, beauty? You're making this really hard."

"I _want_ to believe you."

"But you don't, because of all the times I've lied to you before. So I'm a bad person and it's my fault."

I chose to say nothing. Mike took his hand from his face.

"Zoey, how do you know I'm Mike? How do you know I'm not just pretending?"

"Well, you shouldn't be ridiculous. I know you're Mike because… because…"

Hand. Turkey. Red.

"What's the first thing you ever said to me?"

"Um… Let me see… I'm clumsy and you have really pretty handwriting?"

"Who did I tell you I met at the airport the first time I flew in to Muskoka?"

"… Harold. From Season 1. You said his parents were divorced. You guys had smoothies together or something? Slushies? Slurpees? Icees? I can't remember exactly, but it was one of those."

"What color is my favorite notebook?"

"Trick question. It's not just one color - it's wrapped in duct tape that has zebra stripes on it. It's like the opposite of my giraffe one."

"And what did you give me the night you were first eliminated?"

"A necklace. It was one of Svetlana's. It was supposed to be her face that was on it, but I always pretended it was me, to remind me who was really meant to be in control. I told you that the morning of the finale fight between Cameron and Lightning last year."

Correct on every detail. He really does listen to me.

"See?" I smiled. "You're Mike, all right. No question."

"… I'm glad you believe me."

"Of course. I shouldn't have doubted for even a blink. No way would you lie to me about something this huge and important. You're my boyfriend. My sweet, dorky boyfriend whom I've been in love with since day one."

"Yeah. I love you too, Zoey. You're the best thing that's ever happened to me. Well, except for the part about how I managed to come back and take control again, if it's okay for me to say that."

"I don't mind that at all. I think that's one of the best things that've happened to me too." I placed my palms against his chest and rose a little higher on my toes to kiss the very tip of his nose.

And Mike avoided it by leaning his head to the right.

He moved!

It was a split-second reaction rather than a conscious choice. A microexpression, as we call it in psychology class. He realized his mistake instantly and turned his head back, pressing his lips to mine like limp noodles. Neither of us closed our eyes, but we just stared at each other, asking questions and avoiding answers. We stood. Me not kissing him and him kissing me even less, even though our faces touched. Then he really did shut his eyes, squeezing them in a way that said _I'm an absolute idiot_.

I didn't know which one I'd kissed. If he was Vito at all during lunch, he was acting closer to Mal now.

We were still there, lips pulled apart. He with his arms around my back. His eyes shut, his forehead low, and me staring up into his tight, regretful face in betrayed silence. Mal (I really think he may have been Mal, since his instinct had been to dodge my kiss) shifted his feet. Faking awkwardness, I assumed, on the off-chance that I hadn't connected the dots. I struggled to figure out a way to frame my words into an accusation that didn't make me sound like a moron, but it turned out not to matter because then Josh turned the corner at the end of the hall near the stairs and lit up.

"Mike! Ho boy, you're really alive! Jaxon owes me half his Laffy Taffy stash!"

"Yep," Mal said, unenthusiastically. "Is there someone specific you want to talk to?"

I winced in memory of what had happened over lunch, but Josh just shrugged his wings and scooted down the narrow hall. "Actually, if you don't mind taking the time, we were hoping you'd swing by the big green-screen room to record some scenes with your other personalities."

He upturned one hand. "Aw man," he said (which wasn't very Mal-like), "again? Are you serious?"

"Yeah!" Josh made a frame with his fingers. "Melvin pitched this great idea to the producers, and now we want to do this thing where the camera goes inside your mind like every episode and tells your story and stuff. With a little movie magic and the master's touch, it's gonna be awesome."

"Ugh." Mal slouched over and rolled his eyes skyward. "Filming myself beating myself up last season took six hours and was _awful_ , and that was with my alters 'helping'. I can't imagine it's going to be better now that we have to do more than one scene. Maybe I'll make some really simple stuff up just for kicks."

I placed my hand on his shoulder and tried to smile. "Please don't, Mike. You're a great actor, and I want to know exactly everything you were going through in there with that absolute, disgusting louse Mal in control."

He shot me a look that was slightly offended. As it would be. Facing Josh again he said, "Let's do it now and get it over with. I'm done with Wawanakwa, and the last thing I want to happen when the bus shows up is to be trapped here still working. I really want to see my mom again before the year's out. Did you bring in a javelin and a crown this time?"

"We have a cool wooden mallet."

"Oh, good. That will probably work as a ranged weapon I can stab someone with."

I waved my hand in a slight, slow way as he stalked up the hall after Josh. "'Bye, Mike. Don't get into anything too crazy, okay?"

"See ya, Red." I don't think he was even trying anymore.

So… I let him go. Yes, after waiting anxiously for him for three days, I just stepped back and let him go, like an awesome girlfriend. I just… always felt so removed in situations like these, when one of the others took the wheel- so out of place. Like that time at Playa Des Losers when I'd woken up to the sound of the Super Mario overworld theme, and Sam and I had raced down to the card room to find B putting the finishing touches on a small handmade piano. It was Vito pounding out the melody with his right hand while Anne Maria played with her left, and they had their free arms linked together and laughter on their lips and pure light in their eyes.

I hadn't known what to do. I didn't - still didn't - want to butt in and have them think badly of me. I felt like that again. Only this time, the question wasn't whether it was morally right to shove a shirt over his head and bring Mike back so much as it was a question of _how_ to bring Mike back from being Mal. It seemed too optimistic to think I could trick him into doing dishes.

… Here we were again, like nothing had ever changed. Gwen had been right after all. He had lied to his girlfriend about his alters' existences, or rather their lack of it. Looking me straight in the eyes. Without even stuttering. Without any hesitation. Why even invent the lie about the reset button, then? I guess old habits die hard.

Maybe I shouldn't have let him walk off with Josh. Though - and it's probably wrong of me to say - if he was Mal then I didn't really want to be anywhere near him. Not until I had the chance to gather my thoughts and maybe grab some sort of ranged weapon. I wish I would've finished stringing my bow yesterday. That probably should have been higher on my priority list than staying up until two playing Pillage and Plunder.

Then again, the other interns would be there with cameras, and Josh had wings and fangs and his killer arm, so if anyone could handle Mal, he was the one I'd pour my money on.

If he was Mal. He'd tried to avoid kissing me and he'd brought up his mom, which were both Mal traits. But it was all those little things, too, all those simple Vito actions and crisp Svetlana movements and simple Mike words and those memories that made me doubt…

Well, I guess there was one person here who ought to know for sure.

Once Josh and Mike-Mal-whomever disappeared up the stairs so aforementioned "whomever" could change out of his pajamas, I walked back along the hall and eased open one of the ballroom doors. Jo had gone after the undefended gingerbread men. Courtney and Scott were arguing over Ezekiel, who had perched on the opposite end of the table to gnaw on a chunk of meatloaf in his fingers. Nearby, Cameron appeared to be choking on a scrap of lettuce and Gwen was trying to rescue him. Sam was still too absorbed in his game to have put anything on his plate at all. Owen had come up from the beach and smashed his cheeks to the outside windows like he thought someone would let him in that way. As I entered, Lightning stood up, palms turned out.

"Okay, is anyone here a real guy?"

I coughed into my fist. "Um, hey Zeke. Can I talk to you in private for a sec?"

Everybody turned around. Eyes wide and eyebrows arched. A biscuit fell out of Gwen's mouth and rolled across the ground.

"On _purpose_?" Scott asked, and Courtney slammed his shin with her hard heel.

Ezekiel gave me a curious look. He stuffed the rest of the meatloaf into his mouth and swung himself down to the floor. Just once he licked his hand, smearing sauce. Then, smacking his lips, he loped to my side.

"Two feet, you dirty little caveman!" Courtney shouted after his back. He ignored her. I let the door fall shut behind him as he padded out. The sound made him jump and snarl, but he shook his head and settled down again. His hands tucked together between his feet. Whining, he tossed me a look like _How long will it be before I can get back to the meat?_

"Hey, 'cuz 'cuz." I said the same words in sign language as I placed my back against the wall and slid down beside him. "Nice to see you're eating actual food again. And you really scared me this morning when I caught you sitting outside my door. You're after my case of money, aren't you?"

He plucked at a scab on his neck and made another throat sound.

"Sorry, bud," I said with a smile that I hoped looked less anxious than it tasted. "I won it fairly squarely. But, actually… How's your farm doing? Are you guys still having financial troubles?"

"Ehhhhh…"

Meaning yes, so I dropped my voice into a baritone. "Oh, gee, Zoey. We're doing just fine, which is why I put my sanity and future at risk to sneak back onto the Jumbo Jet Season 3 and try to win it all."

I wondered for the first time if the habit of mental snapping could run in our very-tentatively-shared genes. I'd experienced the emotional high before myself, last year.

Ezekiel's face went a little insulted at my words, but mostly disheartened. I set my folded arms on one knee. "Tell you what, Zeke. You keep working hard with Courtney and your therapist to get all better again, and I'll help you guys out using some of my cash."

His gray eyes lit with silver. He made the signs for _Yeah?_

"Of course. I was planning to give a lot of my winnings to charity anyway, but I may as well pass part off to my cousins' cousin, if you still need help too. Between your medical bills and your mom's, not to mention the hired help and farm expenses that come with owning such a large place-"

Ezekiel cut me off my throwing his arms around my neck and squeezing me tight. I don't think he meant to be strangling me, but I panicked nonetheless and shoved him off. He made a bunch of noises, some of which were scratchy growls and some of which were struggled "Thank you"s. When he had calmed down a bit, I leaned in to give him my own hug.

"I-i-it's not a big deal, Zeke, really. I just want you to get better again, okay? I'd give you all the money you needed for that."

"W-w-w-will! Pr-pr… pr-pr…" For a few seconds more he fumbled with fingers and tongue at the same time.

"Promise?"

He nodded. "Th-th-that, eh? Try…" He spelled 'my hardest'. I spelled, _Awesome, I'll hold you to it. Can't wait_. and he smiled.

"You've already improved so much in two years. It's great."

"C-C-Coourt. N-ney."

"I know. Who could've guessed that perfectionist attitude of hers would come in handy someday? She's a keeper, all right."

Ezekiel pulled a bitter face. I laughed before trailing off. "Hey, Zed, Listen. There's something I want you to answer me honestly. Back there at the table this morning, you said you knew Mike wasn't Mal because you could smell some kind of difference in him. Does he smell like Mike now?"

"K-k-k-k-kiiiin'a," he murmured, raising his palms a few centimeters apart. "J-jus' li'li'li'l."

"Oh… Well, I guess he is coming off almost a week and a half straight of Mal being in control. Maybe it hasn't switched entirely back." I stared at my bare toes. Curled. Uncurled. Ezekiel didn't reply, so I tried again. "Does his scent smell like anything else? Maybe an entirely new person you don't recognize?"

 _He smell like funny. Remember when me also Courtney double-date you to fair? He turn hat guy and mutton bust rodeo sheep plus hogs. Smell like that. Plus creepy jump girl. Also still bad gingerbread bit. All those._

I tapped my chin. "Mike always switches a lot when he sleeps. Technically no one's in control when they're unconscious, so they all kind of bubble up. He was out for three days just now. I imagine he must have switched a lot."

 _Maybe you be yes, eh._

"Did you just sign 'eh'?"

Much to my amusement, Ezekiel actually looked confused. "G-g-g-gueeeess y-yesss."

"But there's still Mike smell in him."

"Y-yeah."

"And a little Mal? And everyone?"

 _Think so. Might wrong._

"Oh, I'm sure you're not mistaken. Your senses are pretty sharp. How strong is Mal's smell now?"

 _Faint. Not the much like gingerbread back of tunnels down there island. Time now not one scent very stronger than other._ He licked a stripe of barbecue sauce from between his knuckles. It left an acidic blue sheen on his skin. He didn't seem bothered.

"Hmm… I guess Mike overpowered them after all. Good to know. Well, thanks 'cuz 'cuz. That helped."

 _Money?_

"I'll write you a check as soon as I get my hands on a book. Don't let me forget."

I was sure he wouldn't.

Ezekiel's stomach let out a feral sort of growl, so I let him back into the ballroom and swung by the larger of the two green-screen rooms to check on Mike. The door was locked for recording, but through the window I could see him sitting at the table with Jaxon and Melody, rubbing his face with his shirt collar. I used the closet room to leave a couple closing confessionals I'd been meaning to make, then took a quick shower. Strung my bow and feathered another two arrows, and kept those on hand as I went back to finish lunch, just in case Mal should make an appearance after all. Most of the food I'd carefully picked out for Mike and the other alters had been eaten. I wondered if I could get away with pulling the same trick for dinner tonight.

I felt obliged to start clearing dishes away to prepare for that, but then a disgruntled Heather and Alejandro finally came downstairs with a bouncy Sierra on their heels, and I had to bring it out again. Courtney and Lightning showed up with Ticket to Ride, Monopoly, and Settlers of Catan. Nobody could decide which they wanted to play more or who should get to play what, so we set up all three and threw together a system where everyone took turns and switched hands whenever they got tapped out.

"And is Mike feeling any more like himself?" Cameron asked when fate shuffled our seats together.

"I hope so, now that he's had the chance to adjust to being awake. I kind of thought maybe he'd start acting more like Mike after some time spent, well, acting. Manitoba and Vito would definitely pop out when he put on his hat or pulled off his shirt. They'd want their time to stretch and strut, and I wasn't in the mood for putting up with their antics."

"… He says they're gone, though."

"Do you believe that, Cam?"

Cameron rolled the Catan dice, setting off a round of groans from everyone who had more than seven cards in hand. "I believe," he said carefully, "that his other personalities may have formed a sort of agreement, for lack of a better word, to surrender themselves more to him and stay down unless he deliberately attempts to call for them. It's possible that could happen, that they've sort of unified in a way." He picked up the robber piece and dropped it down in the nearest forest, where all my white settlements were, and stole a brick from my hand. "But the idea that they could have been wiped out from existence totally, by a 'reset' button inside his head, _that_ I don't believe. That's not how this works. Perhaps the button is a metaphor, like the crown."

"But the crown's not a metaphor."

Why was I in a position where I was having this conversation?

"All right, say it's not." Cameron tilted his head towards the double doors as if indicating Mike. "Say they shift dominance again. Say you marry him and this continues to go on for the rest of their life. Say sometimes Mike wears this 'crown', and sometimes they switch and Vito's dominant. Say Vito's default for a good two years or so. And then they reboot and Svetlana wins the crown, and then it's her you're dealing with sixty percent of the time. Does she matter to you too? What if it took years before Mike won back said crown and reclaimed alpha status? How does that make you feel?"

Well, it meant I'd probably be shutting Svet in the bathroom a lot until the sight of the sinks triggered Mike out again, if we're being completely honest.

No. It wasn't fair - I knew it wasn't - for me to treat one with kindness and snap at the others, even if after all these months I still mostly disliked them. Really, if I wanted to have a relationship with someone who had multiple personalities, it shouldn't matter who was driving right now. I was The Girlfriend, so I ought to be there for them - all of them - simple as that. I had one job in this relationship. I glanced at the clock on the wall. "Do you think Mike's on break yet?"

Sam licked his finger and drew another two cards. "I don't know. Probably."

"I guess it's about time I checked." Grabbing my bow, I handed my sheep cards off to Lindsay and declined Scott's offer of trains. "Yell for me immediately if the bus ever decides to show. I don't want to risk it moving out without us."

"Sure thing, Petals. Do I get a million-dollar tip?"

"Har har. T'would be such a shame if someone kicked your wheelchair off the end of the dock."

"Don't even joke about that," muttered Heather into the deck of wood.

Stuart unlocked the door when I tapped on the window, and in his typical taciturn way pointed with his thumb to Josh when I asked after Mike. Josh just looked at me in surprise while I tried to look just at his good eye.

"We stopped filming maybe twentyish minutes ago, eh. He obviously wasn't in the mood, so we asked him if he'd work on a rough script for us and then sent him on his way. He didn't come looking for you? Great boyfriend. Want me to track him down and give him a solid ruffling?"

"No thanks." If he was my Mike, I had a pretty good guess as to where I'd find him.

Josh folded his wings. "Okay. But I can fly, eh, so… Yeah."

I thanked Josh again and went back out. Taking the steps two at a time, I bounded up the creaky stairs to the hotel's second floor. The green hall was mostly empty. Ezekiel was perched outside my room, probably anxious to get his hands on my million, but he scampered off when he caught my scent.

Across the way from mine, Mike's door was shut tight like death's jaws. I started to try the handle, then hesitated. Tapped with one knuckle. "It's Zoey."

No response.

Panic burned across my throat. I blew into my hands, then brushed them down my stomach. Counted only to eight before I tried again.

"You can be as quiet as you want, but I know you're there. Please let me in."

No response.

"It's Zoey. Just me, no one else. I'm just here to check up on you, because I love you and I'll always be here for you."

No response.

A prickle formed on the back of my neck. Was someone creeping up on me? Flashing my bow up to my shoulder, drawing back the string with an arrow, I whirled around.

Empty hallway. Silent hotel. No response. Why did I have to tell him I was alone? Imaginary beetles were scuttling through my short sleeves, squeezing between my bare toes.

"Um…"

"… Come on in, sweetheart. I mean, if you really want to. I left it unlocked this time."

It probably wasn't Mike… It sounded a bit like Manitoba, with the 'sweetheart' petname, but it wasn't his accent. Wasn't Vito's either. And it was a little too high to be Mike's, like he'd reverted to a past time and was still breaking into his voice. Maybe… maybe it was Mal after all. Maybe he was feeling sulky after his plans for winning the million had been snatched away? Maybe this was my chance to actually talk with him, heart to heart. Maybe this was the storybook moment when I turned him good, and we all lived happily ever after.

I don't know. I was grasping at straws.

When I eased the door open, he was curled up against a nest of his pillows, so I couldn't see anything of his face besides one wet brown eye. He'd changed out of his pajamas and into his regular turquoise shirt. The short sleeves revealed a few fingernail scratches and dark bruises down his arms half-concealed by film make-up from the green-screen room, but there wasn't any blood. The blankets were tangled up at the foot of the bed, swirled in bundles around his yellow duffel bag, with his ratty stuffed giraffe poking out the top. Not good, I thought. He must have been in a bad way if Mike's OCD hadn't kicked in. Just like in the spa hotel when I'd known, undeniably, that even when he hugged me close and kissed my cheek, he wasn't mine.

I set my bow and arrows down and, leaning closer, propped my chin on one of the pillows too. I wanted to ask whichever alter this was if he would let me talk to Mike, but I didn't want to upset him either. If he was Mal then I wasn't sure I wanted to let on that I suspected. And if maybe he actually was Mike (just a super exhausted and unhappy Mike), then I also didn't want to hurt his feelings like I had last time I thought he'd switched when he hadn't. So I gave a reassuring smile and greeted him simply with, "Hey."

"Hey, Zoey."

"I'm glad you're getting some rest. After all those crazy nights of rebooting, I'm sure you need it. Is there something I can do for you? I can stay for as long or as short a time as you want. Would you like me to hold your hand or stroke your hair?"

He hid his face deeper among the pillows. "Not now, Zo."

"All right. I'll just stay here then, in case you change your mind, if that's okay with you." He grunted something noncommental, and I said, "If you like, you can tell me how you're feeling. I might be able to help make you better again. I think that would be good for both of us, although you especially. Tell me, is it your head or your stomach that's feeling off?"

"A little of both, to be honest. I just feel really… sick."

I sized him up with a careful look. "Physically, mentally, or emotionally?"

Mike sighed, arms tightening into his pillow. "I don't know. All of those."

"I'm sorry. That can't be fun. I'm going to rub your back, okay? I think stimulating the nerves there will help calm you down a little." No response. I repeated the question, and still nothing, but he flinched when I touched him so I drew my hand away. "Have you already taken your meds?"

"Yeah, but they made me feel all weird and lightheaded. I guess I'm still adjusting to being myself again. I just hope I don't have to rely on them for the rest of my life."

"I hope you don't either, but not if it means you'll feel sick and depressed all the time. I want you to feel good, whether that's with all your pills or without them. Whatever is needed to make sure you're okay." I started to rub light circles on his back again, and this time he let me. "Do you want to talk? I don't mind what about. I'll listen to anything."

"I don't really, but I don't have much choice."

"It's up to you. I don't want to force you into doing anything you don't want to. I can leave, if that will make you feel better. Just let me know what I can do."

"… No. Please don't go yet. There's something I need to tell you, sooner or later."

I waited for a minute or two, but Mike must have settled on 'later', because he didn't reply. Then he finally rolled over so that he was on his back, and he looked straight at me for the first time. His eyes were still bleary and drooped, and he seemed a little worn around all his edges. He sat up with a squeak of mattress springs, his feet tucked together and his knees drawn up to his chest. "Oh Zoey, thanks so much for all the times you put up with me, even when I was difficult. I'll never be able to repay you for that. I'm sorry I'm such a burden."

"Excuse me? I think you have yourself confused with someone else. You've never been a burden to me. Never once. We all have our little…" I reached out to tap him on the nose. "… quirks, and just because yours are different than my obsessive need to keep busy, my anxiety when I'm alone in absolute silence, my phobias of public speaking and abandonment, and all those days when I told you I couldn't come over since I was sick when really I was hiding at home because I was wracked with all my guilt and self-loathing, and you had your mom drive me up to see me anyway every time, it doesn't mean you should feel ashamed when I see you dealing with the things that are hard for you. I hope you never feel ashamed of being who you are, especially with me."

He rubbed his eyes with one forearm. "Being who I am, huh? Mm… It feels nice to be back in control. For a long time there, I thought it was over for me."

A thin coil of dread wriggled out from my intestines and started to wind its way through my stomach and up my throat. Choosing my words very carefully, pressing my palms against my calves, I tried to keep my voice level. "I know, right? I'm so glad to have you back. I'll miss all your other alters, especially Svetlana, but I really would have missed Mike if he were reset forever too."

He paused.

"Yeah."

I had an absolutely awful misgiving about that pause.

"… Is now the right time to talk about this, or would you rather we held off until later?"

He wiped his eyes one last time. "No, no. Let's do it now. We both need to hear it said out loud so we can make things stop being weird." He took my hands in his, thumbs resting on top of my knuckles, and squeezed gently. "Zoey. This isn't going to work."

My heart smacked against my bare toes. If the alters were supposed to be gone, and he was breaking up with me, that could only possibly mean one thing. I pressed my tongue to the roof of my mouth, bracing myself for the confirmation.

Really, I knew it already. The bruises were on the left side of his face. They'd been made with his left fist. I'd sensed it all along.

He dropped his gaze and moved one hand to scratch his chest, the same way that Vito always did, instead of rubbing his arm the way he should have done. "I'm really, really sorry, Zo. I know this is going to hurt you so bad, and that's not fair. It isn't your fault… or even mine, really, but the truth is that, well … I-I'm not exactly Mike anymore."

Yep. Even though I'd guessed right, it still hurt. I pulled one leg up onto the bed, pretending that I didn't notice the way my hands were shivering in his. "You told me on the way over that you reset your brain. You're together again. You're back to being the original personality."

His eyes brightened like fireworks. He wrapped his arms around his thin body and leaned over so far that he almost toppled off the bed. "I know! It's amazing! I still can't believe it's true. Fourteen years, and I'm me again! All of me at the same time. I'm not broken anymore! I can think of any memory I want, whenever I want it, and it's there! And hey, just look at this. I'm all grown up now." True to the spirit of Vito, he rolled up his shirt to examine his abs, and whistled three notes of Mal's song. "Hot dang. I guess Life realized how bad I got shafted as a kid and decided to make it up to me during puberty. Check it- I'm a beast."

"Sure are. You're a stud."

He put his shirt down, still grinning like he was Mal and he'd just realized it was Christmas. "Hey Zoey, I know this is going to be sudden for you, not to mention the nightmare it'll be for poor Lindsay, but from now on, would you start calling me-"

"Spencer?"

The light eyes died away. He withdrew his hand from the crook of my arm, suddenly looking uneasy. "Oh. You remembered that part, huh?"

"Wasn't hard. It's what Mike named his giraffe." I glanced at the little plush head sticking out from his duffel bag with his rumpled golden pajamas, discarded like trash instead of folded neatly away. "But … that can't really be its name, can it? He - you - told me once that you'd had it since your third birthday. You still would've been Spencer then. You wouldn't name it after yourself… You named it Mike, didn't you?"

He groaned. "You're too smart for your own good, Zo. You're sucking all the surprise out of this. It's not even fun."

I tensed into a ball. That sounded like his Mal side talking.

But Mal wasn't in control anymore. None of them were - not the way they had been all their lives. And, just as quickly as that little aspect of his personality had come, it slipped away again. Spencer reached out to pluck up the giraffe and set it on his raised knee. He stroked its neck for quite awhile, and I let him have his moment of reflection. He'd pick up again when he was ready. Between the two of us, I knew, he had more to tell.

"One time I killed my dog," he said, because that was totally normal. It was Mike's superb ability for starting conversations, if Mal's topic of choice.

Or Vito's, more likely. "We had a dog this one time," Vito had told me in February, the panic in his eyes as I clutched his wrists and the barking filled the air like drums and my eyes were burning despite my allergy medicine, and he kept saying that over and over- "I'm done, I'm done, get me out of here, I'm done."

Trying to conceal my sigh, I rested my fingertips on my forehead. "Why did you kill your dog?"

"I don't know. It was this big German shepherd and it was scaring me. It didn't like me, or anyone else. It always bit. I don't remember if it was a boy or a girl, but I couldn't kill it when I was Manitoba because I loved it, so I did it when I was Vito and figured that it wanted to hurt me."

Vito then. Two for two in Zoey's favor, like a joke. She knows her boys. Knew, anyway.

Spencer put down his knee and folded his legs, but he still kept his gaze low. He bit his lip. "I forgot that happened, but I found that piece in here. Just now. Dad was really mad, and then he twisted my arm out of socket, and he hurled me at the wall so I tumbled down the stairs and broke my leg and lost my tooth. At least I think. I think that happened. I'm not sure."

"Wow… I'm really sorry that happened to you, Spencer. That's rough. Do you think he was drunk?"

"No, he almost never drank. At least, I don't think he did. It's so hard to remember - I was so little, and I didn't really understand. But no, I think he was just mad at me. Wouldn't you be, if your son killed your dog? Yes, you would. But I don't blame him. I was a really bad kid… I think that was the first time I was Vito, but I can't remember for sure. I have too many memories clacking around loose in here. I feel like someone dumped my scrapbook through a shredding machine." He looked up, suddenly brightening. "Hey, Zoey. You scrapbook, right? I remember that."

"Yeah, I do. A little bit. I have an old camera that I adore that uses film, and about fifty million pairs of scissors with blades that cut different patterns."

Spencer smiled a slight smile. "Would you help me make a scrapbook? I'd like to get a real one, with pictures of everyone here, so I can remember. It's kind of hard to remember now, because my mind doesn't fit right yet."

I was starting to feel really guilty over the fact that I was still curled up and closed off, so I unfolded myself and rested my hands in my lap. "Of course, if you want to. We can start putting something together tomorrow. It won't be wonderful - I managed to rescue my camera, but most of my other stuff got lost in the flood. We'll just have to make do with what we can find around. Are you okay with that?"

"Yeah. Thanks, Red. I'm glad you're my friend." Once again, the light faded from his eyes. Spencer glanced down and touched his chest again. "Uh, did I sound a little loony just a minute ago?"

"No, no." I rested my hand on his forearm, even though I didn't really want to. "It's fine. You aren't crazy, you're just a little confused right now. Anybody in the world would be, after everything you've just been through in the last couple of days."

My touch seemed to relax him. Spencer slumped his shoulders. Leaning back, he braced his hands against the bed covers. Then he blew a half-hearted raspberry at the ceiling. "I'm sorry, Zoey. This is really weird for me."

I nodded. "Me too. But you don't have to be sorry."

"Sorry." He cringed. "And sorry for apologizing just then."

I squeezed my eyes shut. How many times had Mike and I had that same exchange, with roles reversed? Those hands were supposed to close around mine and raise them to chest-level as he looked me in my brown eyes with his and said simply through his smile, "You don't have to apologize to me, Zoey. I hope we don't have to hide things from each other ever again. You can say anything you want to me without worrying that I'll be offended. Nothing coming from you can hurt my feelings."

While I'd been lost in my memories, Spencer had evidently been lost in his. He'd withdrawn back into a ball and started to rock. I opened my eyes when he said, "I killed my sister too. I had to watch her drown when we took that weekend trip up to the lake for her birthday. I didn't know she couldn't swim! Nobody ever told me babies can't swim! Why didn't they tell me, Zoey?"

I knew why. Because aside from a few random instances, neither Kurt nor Sydney had spoken to him much for the first two years of his life. They just hadn't seen a reason to, I guess, assuming that he wouldn't understand. Thank goodness he'd had that deaf Joshua neighbor kid to coo over him and teach him sign language.

"I was so scared when it happened and I just wanted to be stronger and clever and brave, and I just… went away. But I remember now. Mom was so mad at me. When Dad went looking for her body, she really let me have it. Finally Dad came back and he said we ought to have the funeral right then and there in the lonely mountains. We buried her in a tiny dress the color of applesauce and about as fancy, and little blue shoes, because that was all we'd brought. It was her birthday. Sh-she was only one year old, and she had skin just a few shades lighter than my dad's and thick black hair just like my mom. She looked a lot like my mom, actually. Dad would speak to her in Spanish, and I only knew English and my signs, but Mom would speak to her in Russian. I always liked to think that if she grew up, she would've grown up Russian too, like the cool people on the TV who always do the flips and win the medals. She did. You know what I mean."

He rubbed around his eye with the nail of his middle finger. "Th-this is my first memory of being Manitoba, and that makes me sad because Manitoba was my favorite to be. I stayed Manitoba Smith for the rest of the day, watching Animal Planet and Crocodile Hunter and things on the TV and trying to be quiet. And when my parents were in bed I snuck outside and I dug all night with my little shovel and pail, and I unburied her tiny body. They wanted to just leave her there, but I wanted to take her back home with us. So I took the fedora from the hat box in the closet and lay her in, and took that box and hid her in the car.

"I got in really big trouble for that, and D-Dad made me take her out and go bury her again. I said no and he hit me. I was pretty confused by that, and I especially wasn't very happy because this guy wasn't the boss of me. I was my own man. But he hit me again, and kicked me in the stomach when I tried to fight back with my pathetically shrimpy body, so I did it anyway. I left her with some treasures that I found - you know, flowers and pretty shells and pieces of colored glass that were scattered by the lake, a-and I swore I'd come back to find her someday when the rest of my body grew up. I drew a map so I'd never forget, but I haven't seen that thing for a decade so someone must have lost it. I did. I lost it. That was bad of me. I was a pretty bad kid.

"I can't even remember what her name was. I think it was Linda, or Nora, or Nisa. Maybe it was Nancy. I think it ended with a 'Y'." He looked up at the ceiling. "I don't remember what the lake was called, either. I guess I'll never be going back for her now. I hope she won't be mad I broke my promise."

… So that's where the treasure hunter came from. What a poor, broken little kid.

Spencer's rocking slowed, slowly. He glanced my way. "Um. This is going to sound really mean. Can I tell you anyway?"

"You can tell me anything you want. I'll be here for you as long as you want me."

"Okay. I'm sorry. I, um, just wanted to say that, well… maybe it's a good thing you can't be in love with Mike anymore. I think it would have hurt your feelings by the end." Spencer took a huge breath and held it for a long time before he blew it out. "Zoey, Mike was fourteen. He was always fourteen. And even if we lived to be eighty-seven years old, he still would have been fourteen."

That also wasn't a surprise. I hadn't consciously considered what it meant before now, but it still wasn't a surprise. Mike didn't have a driver's license. He wasn't allowed to have one (not that it had stopped Vito) because if one of his alters made a switch on the road then they could too easily get themselves killed, and almost had before. I knew that now, but last summer when I'd asked Mike if he could drive, he'd looked at me in pure shock and his first response was, "Of course not, I'm fourteen." It had taken him a second to realize what he said. He'd begun to backpedal, but then Staci had wandered over to drop a hat on his head and trigger Manitoba - on purpose, because it amused her - and I'd never brought the topic up again.

… Wow. You know, I'd never told him about my driving anxiety. Since Mike couldn't drive and we lived four and a half hours away from one another, I'd known that if we ever wanted to meet together without inconveniencing our parents, one of us had to be mobile. So I'd bucked up and taken drivers' ed, even though to this day I can't peel my fingers from the wheel even when my knuckles turn bright white, and I shake from head to toe when the time comes to switch lanes. I knew it made him feel guilty that I was always the one making the effort to see him, but whenever he voiced those concerns, I'd point out that when he kept his alters locked away then he was the one making the effort to see me, so it was only fair that I take my turn. Especially since his fight was the harder one to win.

"Plus," I'd added with a smile, "it's not an inconvenience at all. I love driving up through the country more than almost anything, and the best part of all is that when the ride is over, I get to see you." He'd believed me. He always believed me, unless he was in one of his anxiety slumps and some jerkwad in his brain (usually Mal) had convinced him he was worthless and a burden to me and his mother and the world, and should just put us out of our misery and feed himself to Fang so he could at least make someone happy, even if that someone was a mutant two-legged shark.

I hated being a good liar. Mike was my boyfriend, and he was supposed to recognize when I was upset and offer me reassurance. Even the times when he noticed my dejection, he'd just convince himself that I was hiding secrets I didn't want to discuss, or that I was going through my time of the month and, not wanting to embarrass me, pretend he hadn't noticed me acting a little 'off'.

I don't know why I wanted his support. That wasn't fair to him; he had life a dozen times harder than I did. He didn't need my problems added to his plate. It wasn't his job to be my comforter; it was mine to be his. I was his lifeline. His anchor. I had long ago fought the good fight and forced myself to grow up strong enough to stand alone atop slippery ocean rocks, so now it was my job to help him learn to support himself too so that one day we could stand together, neither one at risk of dragging the other in as we gazed across the grand horizon.

Honestly, I loved Mike, but when you boiled down to the truth, well… I had flown solo for years, taking care of myself and managing just fine, and I didn't need him the same way he needed me. I couldn't expect more from him than he was already giving. He was already doing the best he could, just to be himself. The part of himself that made me happy. That was enough.

 _He still would have been fourteen,_ Spencer had just said.

Right. I poked myself between the eyes. Spencer was the one who was sitting beside me on the bed, not Mike. Who knew how deep Mike was in his subconscious now, or how long it was going to take him to claw his way back to the top. Two years? Five? Ten? Would he even remember me?

What would that have been like, though? To date - marry - a boy who was trapped in the same one mindset as I grew older and older without him. Would he still have seen me as his wife when I was so frail I had to have him push me in a squeaky wheelchair to get around? Or would his romantic love have dissolved into a simple schoolboy crush? If even that. What if a day had come when I was too old for fourteen-year-old Mike, and his attention waned, and he started looking for someone else to spend his time with, Vito or no Vito at the wheel?

"I think it's better this way," Spencer said, gazing into my face. "I know that sounds mean, but I really think it is. For all of us."

"Maybe you're right," I murmured back.

Spencer leaned towards me, elbows to his knees. "Tell me something honestly, Zoey. Did I do a good job? Creating Mike to be a good boy, I mean. I was hardly four years old, and maybe not even that, but I made him the best boy I knew how. The best big brother ever. Part of me was him for a long time, so I know how he felt about it, and I want to hear from someone else. Did it work? Do you really think I was 'good'?"

"You … you did an amazing job. I loved every bit of him." My eyes grew warm, forcing me to blink a whole bunch of rapid blinks. The others - most often, Manitoba - had brought up the 'golden boy' thing time and time again whenever they wanted to complain about either me or Sydney playing favorites, but in some crazy way, this was the first time I accepted exactly what it meant. It meant it wasn't an accident that Mike was the dorky sweetheart I'd spent the last year getting to know.

Wow. No wonder it had been puppy-crush at first sight. I'd fallen in love with someone who was specifically invented to be perfect. How pathetic was that?

"Oh. Hey, Zoey." Still plainly distracted, Spencer pulled a Svetlana and started chewing on his fingernail. "You know, the Mike parts of me still really like you. I hope you know that. But that's it. They're just parts of me again, and there's more to me than that. I'm sorry I kept leading you on today. That was unfair and wrong. I just… didn't want to tell you at first. I didn't know how, and wasn't sure I even wanted to, because I didn't want you to… Well, you know."

"It's okay. It … it wasn't all 'you' that agreed to date me in the first place. So when you came back, you remembered I was a nice person, and you didn't want to hurt my feelings after all the times we spent together, all the memories we made through your Mike side. But I wasn't all your choice, because you're partly the others too and they feel differently about me than Mike does. Especially after the nasty ways I treated them sometimes, so I'm partly to blame. I understand that, and I forgive you. No apology even necessary. You were thrown in the most awkward position you possibly could have woken up to… But can you answer this for me? What happened to the real Mike?"

"I'm the real Mike."

I made a motion with my hand. "The Mike I fell in love with and thought about every day for the past twelve months."

"He melted." Then he realized what he had said. "I mean, he's, um, he's still in here. He was almost all gone the instant he forced the reboot early, but no, some of him is still here. I'm Mike, just like I'm everyone else." Spencer screwed up one eye and waved a half-hearted fist. "Ya darn whippersnapper, heh heh heh."

"You're not Mike," I flat-out told him. It was a mean thing to say, but I did it anyway.

"Oh, you wanna throw some money down on that, sweetheart?"

"Yes." I squared my shoulders. "Mike was left-handed. You're not. He liked the color gold. You prefer Manitoba's orange. Chester liked listing facts about obscure foreign countries he claimed he'd been born in and doing puzzles. I'd be willing to bet my allergy meds that you do too. You don't even have the same voice. Show me _one_ trait that Mike got from you when you created him."

Spencer shrugged. "Sorry. I can't remember which ones I put where."

Right then and there, I almost lost it.

"Um. Hey." Spencer curled his knees in front of his chest and leaned away, rubbing both shoulders. "Y-you won't go Commando Zoey on me, will you? Because I've fought a lot of people, but I've never had to face an archer, except when you were shooting at me when I was Vito, so that seems a little unfair."

"They killed themselves to put you together again, and you don't even have the decency to remember what they were like."

"Well, it has been a long fourteen years, beauty." He rolled his eyes. Mike _never_ rolled his eyes when he was annoyed - only when he was anxious. "Cut me at least a little slack. Everything in here is so fuzzy, and I haven't had time to go through all my memories yet. Let me see." He put his thumb to his lip. "Mike … Mike … Which of these pictures belonged to… Hang on, it'll come to me. Ah. I think I got one." He snapped his fingers. "My fear of storms and my cat allergy. Oh yeah." He pointed into his lap. "And the giraffe thing. Doesn't surprise me, since I named him after mine."

I grit my teeth. "But those aren't _traits_."

"Sure they are, Red." Spencer smiled. "They were pieces of me, and he picked them up because they looked cool and he wanted them. So they're traits, right? They ought to be - his existence is partially founded on them. I mean, not jabbing dirty fingers, but when my personality core shattered then all my bits and pieces were up for grabs, even the ones that I hadn't meant to give up. Then all the imaginary friends I'd invented went scrambling to find something of me they could use to boost themselves up. As many as they could - Anything to one-up the others. When I was Mal I actually killed Little Tyke for the sweet-talking one," he remembered, "and the Chester part of me still got it in the end."

Then he laughed. "In case you ever wondered why I was such a coward as Mal when you rushed at me with intent to land a blow, remember that the little fearful and abused guy exploded on me right before everyone got solidified. Shame. I always liked Tyke. He was my first one, you know. Didn't mean to make him, but one day Dad called out for Little Tyke like he always did, and … Well, he was there. Whoopsie. And that's why we use birth control."

" _What_? You're insane." I scooted away down the bed.

"I may be paraphrasing." Spencer thought about that, rubbing Spencer- er, Mike- Uh, the neck of the giraffe. "Although, you're right. Everything does sound a little weirder when I put it into words. Hm. Uh, what else was I as Mike?"

Shutting his eyes, he began to tick off on his fingers, holding his left palm straight in front of him and facing up the way Chester did. "Obedient- I gave us that one on purpose, because I was never good enough and wished I was. The desire to be loyal and honest to the point where we were an awful liar. Ooh boy, he was always ticked as a scorpion we got that. But to be fair I made sure to take it when I was Mal too. You're welcome, by the way; that saved a lot of people I'd meant to murder, eh? Um… Good boys were clean, and I think that's where our obsessive hand-washing came from. That was an accident on my part, and Mike didn't deserve that. Sorry. Aw man, I can still remember all those hours I wasted scrubbing. Um, what else? I was trying to invent someone Dad would like, so I gave him something really weird and cool… What did I give him?"

I let him go on that way for a bit, but he was turning Mike into a mere checklist. So, bristling, I said, "I know more about him than you do. For one thing, I know that he always put his hands on his knees and rubbed them when he was getting restless about sitting down. You're doing that _now_ and you can't remember why. I know that Mike always touched his right shoulder when he was ashamed of what he was thinking, and his left when he was getting annoyed. He had his little verbal ticks, and you're using them in all the right places. 'Uh' was for sudden realizations and panic. 'Um' was for intentional lies and simple puzzlement. And he always played with his feet, tapping his big toes together when he was at his happiest."

"Oh. Okay. There you go, then." He smiled. Manitoba's would have been higher up the cheeks, in more of a grin. Vito would have screwed up his eyes when he pulled his, if he really meant it. Svetlana's would've been all lips and no teeth - she never did anything more unless you caught her completely off guard. Chester was pretty much the same, with that glint in his one eye that was always half affectionate and half sarcastic. Mal would have set his upper teeth too far back on his lower ones so both rows were almost aligned. But no. Spencer had retained Mike's smile. Because to him, in his mind, being the happy personality was Mike's defining trait.

I shook my head. What was the use? Holding back my sigh, I closed my hand over his knuckles for the last time. "I'm happy for you, Spencer. Truly. I hope you have a great life. Take good care of Sydney and all your fish. And Indiana."

He twisted his palm around so our fingers interlocked. "Thanks, Red. It means a lot to know that you're okay with this. I know it isn't easy. And you don't understand it fully - even I don't, I think - but you're doing your absolute best to be strong for me, and I'm so glad. You just want me to be happy again. Thank you. You're the coolest girl ever."

We stayed there, staring at our hands without thinking any thoughts.

"I'm sorry," we blurted at the same time. We untangled. I rubbed my ankle, and he traced his fingers through his hair. It was still flat, with tufts that dangled in his eyes. Mike's unmanageable scruffiness was there, but a shine suggested that Spencer had pressed it down with gel. I wondered if his reason for doing that was the same reason Vito had - Make yourself a smaller target, and you're harder to grab when someone wants to smash your face into the floor. I guess so. After all, he'd been the one to put that idea in Vito's head in the first place.

"I think I'll sleep in my clothes tonight," he announced, frowning at his duffel bag. He lifted one foot and nudged it away. "Turquoise isn't really my color, but I wouldn't feel right putting on Mike's gold."

"Whatever makes you most comfortable. I won't judge."

I got to my feet. Spencer made a hesitating noise. I glanced back to see him reaching for me, with his right hand. He pressed it back to his chest, then reached for me again. He took my wrist as he stood and tugged me close. "Uh… O-one last kiss, Red? For old times' sake?"

"I don't think I'd feel okay with that," I said, easing him off, and he said "Oh," and then I said, "Wait."

… Probably, I wasn't really going to see him again once we left for home, unless Chris dragged us into another season. Which I would probably turn down. And I still wanted to know one thing. Or maybe wanted an excuse. But I had to know for sure whose kiss Spencer had been left with, or I'd be wondering for the rest of my life.

So, yeah. I said yes. I hope that's all right.

He put his left hand around my back and his right one behind my left ear, with his thumb on my cheek. Chester's embrace, and I remembered all those times he'd hugged me good-bye at the door and pretended he didn't want to. Snuck me hard sweets when Sydney wasn't looking. Told me that he'd be "okay" with calling me his granddaughter-in-law if I would just change this thing and that thing and that other thing too.

Then I remembered how he'd untangled the braid my own mom had put in my hair when it was Valentine's Day and Mike took me dancing and they'd all wanted to have their turn at the wheel, and Chester kept complaining that my hair wasn't 'right', and then out of _freaking nowhere_ fixed me up like a pro, somehow producing an insane amount of hair ties and store-bought jewels in the process without even moving (Come to think of it, poor Mike had probably gotten cheated out of gifting me those, if they were in his pockets).

I thought of the way Chester had always insisted that he'd be the one to walk me down the aisle to meet Mike at the church altar when we were married, despite my gentle insistence that such a thing wouldn't work out quite as he seemed to think it would… Oh, please don't kiss like Chester, Spencer. I didn't want to know how Chester kissed. I mean, the old guy was convinced he didn't have teeth.

Stop it, Zo. Focus. It's Mike in there. It's Mike. Surely some part of him wanted to say his last good-bye? Maybe I could bring him out again, even a little. Y'know, like that time Vito wouldn't stop hitting on me and wouldn't go away, and kept saying that if I was Mike's girl then I ought to be his too, and finally I'd gotten so fed up with him that I'd shoved him in the corner and grabbed his shoulders and slammed my teeth into his and kissed him so hard that I'd short-circuited him with my overwhelming passion (Okay, I'll admit it - it was his own panic that he couldn't breathe that did him in; I was pinching his nose and had pinned his arms against the wall with my hip and knee) and he'd snapped into Mike midway, and it had been so funny that we'd both laughed into each other's lips before we remembered he still wasn't getting any air, and he'd passed out in my arms, and I'd had a breakdown because that was when I knew what it was like to kill somebody, even though the whole time I knew full-well that they were still alive, and Svetlana had come out to comfort me and make me hot chocolate with too many marshmallows and not enough chocolate powder, and we got so deep into talking about boys and babies that we almost didn't notice when the towels and wooden spoons by the stove caught on fire, and she didn't know how to put out the flames because she'd never seen real actual fire before and in a panic she tried to smash them out of existence with her hands and burned her palms and when everything was under control again I bandaged them up and she wouldn't stop weeping silent tears because she was so ashamed with herself for getting hurt and it was that day I realized exactly how it would be to have a sister…

Spencer hadn't kept Mike's kiss. It really was Vito's.

Well, duh. Obviously he would kiss like the part of him that had had the most experience.

We parted ways, and I thanked him for every memory I'd been given, and he apologized for not knowing how to be what I wanted him to be anymore, and I knew he meant it. When I shut the door behind me, he was doing another Mike thing that he didn't remember. He was sitting on the edge of his bed, his chin resting on his knees. He rocked back and forward, forward and back, with his eyes locked on the mirror above his dresser. One hand held the stuffed giraffe to his throat.

I didn't feel sorry that I left him to brood over his thoughts alone. Is that mean?

Cameron intercepted me in the hall. I wasn't sure if I could tell him that his best friend in the world was dead without snapping his little heart, so I just said that he should talk to Mike himself if he wanted any answers. Cameron looked at me thoughtfully for a minute, then said that maybe he'd hold off until morning. Probably the wisest move to make. I wasn't sure how well I'd be sleeping tonight.

I picked some food off the abandoned buffet table and aggressively helped Josh and Stuart with the few dishes that weren't made of plastic. Then I left the Casa and trailed down along the beach alone.

It was just starting to get dark. There was a short jetty to one side of the hotel, so I wandered out and sat down on one of the slippery boulders at the tip. Fang came up to greet me, but his toothy grin dropped when he caught sight of my bitter face. Say what you like about mutant sharks, but they're creatures of sympathy when it really comes down to the wire. Plus, Fang's always had a soft spot for redheads. He crawled onto the rocks and lumbered over to nose my shoulder. I stroked his snout in silence.

We stayed like that for a long while, and then he just got up and swam quietly away. I was watching the last of the bubbles fizzle from the surface when I picked up the click of footsteps on pebbles, and Sam was walking down the jetty too.

When he drew close enough to hear, I mumbled, "I kind of want to be left by myself right now, Sam, if that's okay with you."

"Well, that's too bad, because it's not. Spencer gave us the run-down, and since Lightning obviously wasn't going to check up on you, I figured I'd do it. So, how are things in Zoeyland tonight?" Sam swung himself down beside me on the boulder. "Cheat code for your thoughts."

Sigh. I hooked a floating patch of kelp with my shoe. "Sorry. I don't mean to dump my problems on you, and if you get me started then I might go on for awhile."

"No, I can take a dump," he insisted, and then his face went blank. "Uh, crap. No, wait! Augh, that made it worse! Why doesn't real life let you return to the last save point? Then I could have dessert all over again!"

I giggled once, but didn't take my gaze from the water. "Thanks Sam, but it's no big deal. I'm okay. Honestly, I hurt worse when I was ten and learned that my grandparents and their little puppy went over a cliff in their RV and didn't make it out alive. I was just thinking the usual sob story fluff here." Forcing my lip not to quiver was about as doable as graffitiing the Great Wall of China. It can maybe be done with a little luck and if you try really hard, but not without somebody noticing you in the process. "L-like how when Mike went to take that nap, and he paused at the door to rub his eye with the hem of his shirt, and he smiled and said 'See you later'…"

Sam placed his arm behind my back and rubbed my shoulder. "I know."

My hands opened and closed again and again. "I just don't understand. How can it be that I knew and I guess sort of loved each one of them like separate people, and now when they're together, he's so… I can't bring myself to… I can only see…"

"Because you're smart, Zoey. You're nervous because you know that Mal is still in there, and you're afraid that one of these days he'll cause trouble again." He smiled. "But you don't have to worry. You know why? Ask me why."

Second sigh. "Why shouldn't I worry?"

"'Cuz the Mike side of him exists too, and it balances him out. And Mal's there to fill in the gaps that he won't or can't manage, right? Kinda like how Bernard wouldn't be much of anything without Laverne and Hoagie to cover his weak points."

"I didn't get the reference there." I made a swiping motion to show that it had flown over my head.

His face turned rosy. "Yeah, that's fine. You probably don't need to know which dorky old game that was from."

I pulled in a deep breath. Then another. Sam leaned forward, his brows drawn together in a single line that said _She's not okay_. I rubbed my cheek with my thumb, eyes on the washing waves. "I'm sorry. It's me, not you. I shouldn't cry. I'm sorry. I just… All season, I was sure it was coming. Even before we got back on the island. I watched the other couples on the other seasons, and how so many of them broke up, and I was sure that Zoke was next. I braced myself for it. And continued to brace myself for it when he started to pull away and Mal was gaining control. I knew it was coming." I looked up at him again. "I just thought I wouldn't take it this hard. Sorry."

"Hakuna matata. No worries. I mean, Dakota has become my entire world over the last year, and if she died tonight before I had the chance to say good-bye then I'd be crushe… I'm not helping here."

"It's all right." I rubbed my arms. "I know you're trying, and I don't mean to seem like I'm ungrateful. Sorry if I come off that way. I'm just trying to think positive, you know? Maybe it's for the best that things turned out like this. I mean, now he gets to be entirely himself again. No more waking up holding an armful of scorpions that Manitoba wanted to adopt. No more wandering around hungover because _someone_ didn't want to deal with the consequences of his own drinking, and no more having to answer all sorts of phone calls from girls who keep asking when Vito will be home. No more being flustered when he regains himself to find everyone giggling and mocking him in girly Russian accents or teasing him about the way he'd called him their elder. No more nursing sore muscles and sprained wrists from Svetlana. No more worrying that he'll wake up with a knife in his fist and a bloody body on the floor."

No more awkward, flustered smiles as he pressed flowers into Zoey's hands.

 _No_. I would not bring myself into this. Deep breath. Think positive. He was happy now. I shouldn't be anything but glad for him. No regrets.

I slammed my fist down on the boulder. "No matter how badly he wanted to be whole again, I just can't believe that Mike would delete himself and fuse his body with stupid rotten _Mal_!"

Still holding my far shoulder, Sam guided my hand into my lap. It left a smear of blood on my pants. "Come on, Zoey. Don't blame Mike for that. I don't think he meant to do it. I mean, really. If Mike had gone to sleep knowing it was the last time he would be just himself, don't you think he would have told you good-bye?"

"That makes it worse, Sam."

"Sorry."

My heart itched. So did my eyes. I rubbed them both. "He was probably in pain when it happened. Imagine, your whole identity. Your whole concept of being. Your whole…" The word was bitter on my tongue, but it begged to be said. "… personality, just yanked from under your feet like that. Reset button, he told me. I should've believed him. Should've guessed that it was just a matter of time before he was so tired and weak that he couldn't hold on anymore, and it took him too. He _melted_." The tears stung for the first time. "Second by second, for sixty-six hours. He would've died an awful death."

"Maybe. But it's over now. And you know what?" Sam turned to look at me again. "I'll bet he wasn't scared."

"Bet he was," I snapped back, shrugging him off, and then was slammed by an avalanche of guilt. "No. No, you're right. I'm sure he wasn't. He wouldn't've been."

Lying made me feel a little better. I could almost see why Mal had liked it so much.

With a sigh, I folded my arms and leaned back so that only the insides of my knees around the lip of the rock were keeping me from falling down. I kept that way for awhile, watching dark clouds scuttle over the stars and purple mountains.

"He never got to watch the Olympics," I told Sam.

"Never?"

"Not even once. Svetlana wouldn't let him, even when it was just re-runs."

We fell silent. There was one hair by the crook of my elbow that was longer than all the others.

"Sam, did Mike ever tell you what his triggers were?"

He shook his head. "I really wanted to ask, but I didn't want to make it weird or anything. Especially with Staci on her power trip."

"Then I'll tell you. Mike was the good boy. The helper. When the bed was unmade and no one was using it, it bothered him, so he'd come out and fix it. When there were dishes in the sink, he'd wash them and put them away. Laundry on the floor, he'd gather it all up and go clean it - in the bathtub or a bucket, usually, because that's all he was tall enough to reach for a long time. He'd wash the tables. He'd sweep the floors. Scrub the windows. Mow the lawn. Mike was the one who choked down all the medicine, wore all the casts, took all the shots…"

Finally I took a deep breath and gazed up at the waning crescent moon. "Do you think that all the alters will go to heaven when Spencer dies, or will it just be him?"

"Oh, I don't believe in heaven. I just believe in ghosts that haunt people forever until they fulfill their final purpose and disintegrate."

I glared from the corner of my eye.

"All of them," he said. "Totally all of them. Well, the ones that deserve it, anyway. So no matter how bad things look now, this is just like, temporary, right? You'll still get to be with him forever when you die or something, I guess, probably?"

Maybe. Although, back when my cousins used to have their get-together with both sides of their family, and Jessica would pick on us all mercilessly and Ezekiel would grab my arm and drag me away from her, spitting insulting things about her throwing him in front of stampeding horses, he and I used to gather around our shared aunt for Bible lessons and story time. She had always said that after we die, there's no pain and no sadness, except what we feel for those who didn't make it to heaven, even though they could have and would have if they'd just chosen to. Everyone is healed. Everyone is perfect. Everyone is…

… whole again.

Of course I'd fall in love with the one dead boy who so totally wasn't supposed to exist that even the afterlife rejected him. Was there a place for oddballs like Mike? They had to belong somewhere. They couldn't just go nowhere. After all, Spencer was basically his creator, his God, whether intentionally or not. And disorder or no disorder, his personalities had become their own individual people. Surely after all the years they'd served in hell, they'd earned their spots in heaven now? He couldn't just… use them and abandon them. Could he?

I straightened up again. "Hey, Mike! I know you're out there somewhere! Catch!" With that, I pressed my hand to my lips and blew an enormous kiss into the stars.

Sam smiled at me. "Huh huh. Zoey, that was really cheesy."

"I know," I giggled back. "Oh, FYI I'm disgusted with myself for it. But I'm going to do it again. Hey, Mike! Catch this one too!"

"… Zoey?"

I threw kiss after kiss after kiss into the air so that Mike would have to catch at least one of them, even if Vito shoved him away and tried to intercept. Chester would pick him up and dust him off and make sure he got one. Or if the old man scoffed and turned his back, then Mike could climb up on Svetlana's shoulders, and she'd carry him across the clouds, leaping and twirling and reaching and grabbing. If Mike searched and searched in the sky and came up empty-handed and convinced himself that all my kisses were gone, Manitoba would prove him wrong. He'd find one tucked away somewhere. If anyone could, Manitoba Smith would. And if Mal had stolen them all to burn on a pyre just for the fun of it and there weren't any left for Mike to remember me by, then it didn't even matter. I could always make him more for as long as I lived.

Sam kept glancing sideways at me like I was a little sister that our parents should have tucked into bed two hours ago, and I laughed and I laughed even as my shoulders shook and I bled from my eyes, because everything was okay in his mind, I think.


End file.
